My guide and I made our way down to the Diabetes education department and met the doctor and two patients she was in the process of instructing. In an old wooden bookcase with glass fronts, there was a display of plastic food on plates that showed suggested serving sizes of food – looking like they dated from about twenty years before. In her patient training, the doctor shows the patients how to check for complications, the proper way to inject insulin, how to check blood glucose level, shows them the right kinds and amounts of food to eat, and advises them on getting more exercise. When I asked her what else she needed to help her in her job of educating patients, the doctor remarked that she needed someone to evaluate the patient outcomes after going through patient education. Continue reading »

My visit to this premier university hospital and my conversations with both the senior administrator and diabetes educator were so rich that I have broken my visit into two blog entries. The first entry covers my interview with the senior administrator who is also head of the endocrinology department. The second entry covers my interview with the diabetes educator, my impressions, and the overall implications of what I learned.

I arrived at 9AM for my interview with a senior administrator at a premier university hospital in Guangzhou. Patients who seek out this hospital know and trust that the diagnoses they receive here will be accurate. Already hallways were jammed with patients and doctors.  Continue reading »

Greetings from Tanzania!  Selected as part of this year’s class of Fellows, I have just arrived in Dar es Salaam to work with PharmAccess Foundation for a 6 month assignment, working with two other Fellows Mario Villa (from Pfizer Italy) and Henry Okoth (from Sanford, North Carolina).  As a team, we are working on quality monitoring and evaluation systems and financing models for pharmacies. This is work for the SafeCare and Medical Credit Fund which are part of the PharmAccess group.  Continue reading »

I have learned from interviewing diabetes experts, hospital administrators, and diabetes educators that the hardest group to engage and motivate on diabetes awareness and management is the working-age population. Workers generally are “too busy” with day-to-day activities, family, friends, work pressures, and such, to prioritize personal health—until they end up in the hospital with complications from undiagnosed diabetes. Continue reading »

To illustrate my interview reports and provide for future Global Health Fellows, I decided to buy a camera for GBCHealth. I had scouted out a parcel of electronic stores in the Chaoyang district and found my way to the Sony camera booth in the midst of a chaos of retailers. After I bargained the price down from 2200 yuan to 1500 yuan (1 yuan = .16 USD), the saleswoman asked me what color camera I would like. The choices were black, silver, red, and lilac. Continue reading »

I recently visited the Da Xing Qu She Qu Wei Shang Fu Wu Zhan Health Station, located some twenty-five kilometers south of central Beijing. My two companions were a pharmaceutical sales representative and an endocrinologist at a prestigious government hospital in central Beijing.  The rutted dirt road coursed through a rural landscape of centuries-old housing and fields of rubble. When we arrived, a makeshift market comprised of sawhorse tables heaped with meats, vegetables, and mixed merchandise and oil drums containing fires for warmth sprawled over several vacant lots, just a hundred meters from the health station. Within an hour of our arrival, the market had dismantled and disappeared. Continue reading »

It is hard to understand the Chinese health system without visiting a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioner. Located in most villages and cities throughout China, TCM uses both herbal and Western medicines to treat its patients. When Michael Shiu, a GBCHealth colleague, had a dry cough for a couple of days, he decided to visit the TCM to treat it. He didn’t need an appointment; he went when it was convenient to him. Continue reading »

Since I arrived early for a meeting with an NGO executive in the Chaoyang district, I walked around the neighborhood to get my bearings and pass some time. Coming around a corner, I saw a crowd of people around a long table collecting pamphlets. Looking more closely, I realized that this was a health fair staffed by a local hospital. Continue reading »

Twenty-five years of analyzing the US healthcare market, two months independently studying Chinese culture since my acceptance as a 2012 Global Health Fellow, two weeks embedded in the New York office of GBCHealth, and five days immersed in a Beijing neighborhood have led me to this moment of exploration and adventure.

I am working with GBCHealth for three months to establish a diabetes awareness and prevention initiative in China. It is mind-boggling that 92 million Chinese have diabetes (and over half are undiagnosed). I will be the first of four Global Health Fellows over the next two years to work on this project, so I am building the foundation for those who will follow. Continue reading »

As I begin to write this last blog, I can’t help myself but look back and reflect on the activities that I’ve done during the last 5 months I’ve spent working with FHI 360 in Papua New Guinea.  Back in May, it seemed as if time moved at such glacial speed.  Now that I have roughly about three weeks left, everything seems to be moving so quickly right before my eyes.  Continue reading »