It's been a busy and exciting week for our innovators making headlines around the world.  Find the top three stories below!

WE CARE Solar 
Last week WE CARE Solar was featured in Elizabeth Gore's Huffington Post blog. She discusses the incredible impact that WE CARE's solar suitcase has had on improving outcomes for birthing mothers in a small Ugandan clinic.  "This suitcase has enabled health workers to increase the number of successful live births in the clinic at night to up to 60 a month. I bet you will never look at your suitcase the same!"

Read the entire story here.

Sproxil
In The Guardian, Sproxil CEO Ashifi Gogo was interviewed on their work and challenges offering brand protection services to pharmaceutical companies in emerging markets.  Gogo speaks to how winning the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year award has impacted their business and how they will continue to innovate and support brand protection around the globe.

Read the interview here.

ClickMedix
ClickMedix won a $100,000 grant through InvestMaryland this week.  InvestMaryland provides grants to startup companies that show great potential and have a focus on technology and biotechnology.  More details on the InvestMaryland initiative can be found here.

Read the full article here.

Katie Guidera, recent graduate in the Duke Global Health program, was co-chair of the SEAD Student Advisory Council and cofounder of the Malaria Awareness Program (MAP) in South Africa.  Her work with MAP has been recognized by Ashoka U and the Clinton Global Initiative University.  Katie's hard work and initiative also helped SEAD develop programs to get students involved in social entrepreneurship on campus.  Recently Katie shared with us her thoughts on SEAD, social entrepreneurship, and her plans for the future.  Congratulations, Katie, on your graduation!  We know you will continue making an impact in the world.

A fellow classmate recently described social entrepreneurship to me as a ”reimaging of the liberal arts education”. He explained that engagement in social entrepreneurship presents an opportunity to prepare students for a life of meaning and purpose, and that it does so through teaching personal, professional, and intellectual skills that empower students to be leaders across almost any field. My experiences working with Duke’s Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) over the past two years have led me to believe that this is the case. These experiences with SEAD have allowed me to reimagine and reinvent my own Duke education.

Throughout the development and growth of my own social venture, One Sun Health, I have had the opportunity to learn from students, staff, and innovators who work with SEAD. The members of the SEAD Student Advisory Council (SAC) in particular have provided a significant amount of guidance as I’ve worked through challenges common to social entrepreneurs – launching a website, applying to grants, and incorporating as a legal entity. However, it is the less tangible forms of mentorship that my peers have provided that have most inspired and impacted me.

As a member and co-chair of the SEAD SAC, I have been able to connect with ambitious students across Duke’s undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. These students have worked tirelessly to increase the social entrepreneurship and global health conversation on campus. They have worked to inspire students by designing case competitions and workshops. They have worked to engage students by imagining alumni networking tools and mentored research opportunities with SEAD’s global innovators. SEAD SAC-inspired activities like these have helped us to form a family of students and faculty who share common goals of innovating change globally, and have ultimately made our campus a more colorful place to work, study, and live.

My time with SEAD has helped me to discover my passion for working at the intersections of global health and social entrepreneurship, encouraging me to continue to expand One Sun Health in South Africa this summer and pushing me to explore the public sector next year as a business analyst with Accenture Federal Services. Beyond this, I hope to follow the footsteps of many of SEAD’s amazing innovators, leading the creation and growth of new health systems models and healthcare products in the developing world. I have come to see social entrepreneurship not only as a reimagining of the liberal arts education, but also as a reimagining of our ability to generate powerful, sustainable change in the world.  SEAD has created a community that stands at the forefront of this reimaging process at Duke, and I am forever thankful to have been a part of it.




Learn more about Katie's work with MAP here.

Recently Sproxil was honored at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Abuja, Nigeria, as one of seven Social Entrepreneurs of the Year.  Congratulations, Sproxil!  Learn more about the award and all of the winners here.

Have you listened to NPR's special series on social entrepreneurship?  NPR went around the world to interview social entrepreneurs tackling a wide range of issues.  Meet the man that sacrificed everything to invent a machine to make low-cost sanitary pads in India.  Or the farm in Vermont that raises goats and provides the meat to refugees.  Or the company that has developed a low-cost alternative to hearing aids using Bluetooth technology.  The stories run the gamut from global health to education to agriculture and more.

These stories should give you plenty to chew on during you next lunch break!  Listen now.

“Global health as an academic field reflects the new global health landscape and is a driving force behind the globalization of higher education,” writes Merson.  “Global health is multi-faceted and requires a curriculum that emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches and allows students to synthesize, evaluate, and apply knowledge that is relevant to complex real-world challenges.”

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article on the increase in demand and growth of global health programs throughout North America.  The article provides great insights into these changes and what it means for the field of global health.


Read the full article here.



USAID recently released their Health-Related Research and Development Progress Report highlighting USAID's role in global health research and development.  On page 16 of the report, you will find a section detailing how SEAD is an integral part of USAID's strategy for promoting innovation and scaling impact.

Other key highlights from the report include:

Maternal Health and Newborn Mortality
 Validating a simplified approach to manage the third stage of labor that will enable lower-level skilled birth attendants to also manage inadequate contractions of the uterus, a cause of hemorrhage and death.

Demonstrating through evaluative research the efficacy of training lower-level health professionals to manage asphyxia, a leading cause of newborn mortality.

Developing and introducing chlorhexidine (CHX) antiseptic for umbilical cord care – a new, low-cost preventive intervention to reduce newborn infection, which causes up to 24 percent of newborn mortality.

Saving Lives at Birth
Stimulating new approaches to support innovation. In partnership with Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development promotes disruptive technology development and helps drive innovative solutions.

SILCS Diaphragm
Expanding contraceptive options through the development of a multipurpose diaphragm. The SILCS diaphragm is a cervical barrier method that does not require a pelvic exam, is reusable and can potentially protect against HIV and sexually transmitted infections when paired with microbicide gels.

HIV Vaccine Research
Accelerating progress on HIV vaccine research by analyzing antibodies that neutralize a broad spectrum of HIV.

Preventing Pandemic Threats
Developing the first-ever scientifically based prediction tool of unknown viruses that are potential candidate sources for emerging pandemic threats.

Detecting Counterfeit and Substandard Medicine
Advancing from proof-of-concept, a prototype of a portable device for detecting counterfeit and substandard medicines. This device is less expensive and more accurate than current technologies.

Read the full report here.

"This future isn't being created just in Hollywood or Silicon in Valley; Indian entrepreneurs too are leading the charge. 

Forus Health, for example, has built 3nethra—an inexpensive device for the early detection of common eye ailments. Sofomo Embedded Solutions markets Lifeplot—a 12-Lead mobile electrocardiogram (ECG). Agatsa is developing Sanket—a pocket-sized ECG with a display which does not require any leads or wires. "

Forus Health was recently featured in an article about the use of information technology in healthcare innovations in The Economic Times (India).

Read the full article here.

May 14, 2014   |   12:30pm - 6:00pm   |   Trent Semans Center, Great Hall A

On May 14th, Duke Cancer Institute and Duke Global Health Institute are sponsoring the Global Cancer Symposium: Tackling the Slow Motion Disaster. Global Cancer Symposium is free and open to the community. The agenda will cover a range of topics and perspectives from local as well as international speakers. The presentations and discussion panel will be followed by a reception open to all participants.

Speakers include: Ted Trimble, Director of the National Cancer Institute's Center for Global Health; Nestory Masalu, Chief of Oncology at the Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza, Tanzania; Edmundo Mauad, Director of the Hospital de Cancer in Barretos, Brazil; Jian Zhou of the Liver Cancer Institute in Shanghai, China; and Manju Sengar of the Tata Memorial Center in Mumbai, India.

"This has been a year of ups and downs for the CASE team.  Most notably, this year marked the passing of our founder and dear friend, Greg Dees.  We are all still struggling to come to terms with his passing and miss him daily. However, we know that he is here in spirit, guiding what we do and, in his honor, we continue to drive CASE forward to provide leaders and organizations with the business skills needed to create lasting social change.  In that spirit, we wanted to celebrate some of the accomplishments from the past year."

The Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) has done a great write up of CASE and SEAD accomplishments over the 2013-2014 school year.  Through research, publications, academics, and events, we are proud to be a global leader in the study of social entrepreneurship!

Read more at CASE Notes.

“What are your numbers?” was the first question from a young, affable entrepreneur to a slightly younger, non-American physician at the breakfast table one morning at the SEAD Conference. It’s a question definitely important in the context of innovative health care, but perhaps not the greeting the physician expected.

This brought to my mind the difficulty I have seen in communication between physicians and their MBA counterparts. In a medical setting, emphasizing patient numbers without emphasis on quality of care can be a disaster. Physicians, at least in many parts of the world, do not speak MBA jargon such as “lean processes,” “right skilling” and “scalable.”

Dr. Philip McKinley, ophthalmologist with Duke Eye Center and SEAD mentor, was featured on the NextBillion.net blog this week. His piece discusses how to bridge the gap in communication between physicians and entrepreneurs when working together on social ventures.

NextBillion.net aims to connect business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academic interested in the connection between development and enterprise.

Read the full blog post here.