
Digital Bridge Breaks New Ground in 2019, Launches in Two Sites
Approach Could Prove Revolutionary for U.S. Public Health In what could be a transformative step for public health in the United States, Houston and Utah became the first locations to implement an approach that allows health care providers to automatically send information about reportable diseases to public health agencies using a new and innovative electronic… Read More

Ambitious Roadmap Outlines How Countries Can Better Respond to Disease Outbreaks
The Task Force for Global Health and its global partners have crafted a far-reaching, seven-step action framework to modernize, strengthen, and expand global Field Epidemiology Training Programs (FETPs). It is now well understood globally that a well-trained and resourced army of field epidemiologists is essential for a country’s ability to detect and combat disease outbreaks…. Read More

CHAMPS Data Highlights Causes of Newborn and Child Deaths in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
For the first time, public health officials and researchers around the globe will have access to accurate and timely data about the causes of death in children under age five in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The data release is part of an ambitious and comprehensive initiative called Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS)… Read More
A Leprosy Advocate, Who Was Once a Patient, Talks About Stigma, Empowerment, and Treatment
In 2010, Mathias Duck was working at a hospital in his native Paraguay when he began to feel tingling in two fingers of his right hand. As a pastor at the hospital, Mathias was deeply familiar with the symptoms of leprosy – the hospital treated many people affected by the disease – and he knew… Read More
What Makes Us Optimistic for 2019
At The Task Force, we are consummate optimists about global health. So we thought it only fitting that we end 2018 by asking a few of our staff members to share what they feel positive about for the year ahead. Take a look at what they said. Tony Edwards, Senior Operations Manager Girija Sankar,… Read More
TEPHINET Director Recognized with The Task Force’s Inaugural Consequential Compassion Award
When TEPHINET joined The Task Force in 2009, it consisted of only 30 field epidemiology training programs (FETPs) in the same number of countries. Today, the network has grown to 71 programs serving more than 100 countries. Dionisio Herrera, MD, PhD, has been at the helm of TEPHINET during this extraordinary period of growth in… Read More

New $29.9M Funding Boosts Fight Against Neglected Tropical Diseases
A new $29.97 million grant will build on the successes of a collaborative research partnership hosted by The Task Force for Global Health to control and eliminate five neglected tropical diseases. The Task Force’s Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center (NTD-SC) was awarded the five-year grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant funds… Read More

The Task Force Embarks on Initiative to Eliminate Hepatitis B and C
The Task Force for Global Health has launched an ambitious program to eliminate hepatitis B and C, two infectious diseases that affect more than 300 million people and kill an estimated 1.3 million people annually – a higher death toll than HIV, malaria or tuberculosis. The initiative, anchored in The Task Force’s collaborative approach, will… Read More

Influenza Symposium Kicks off The Task Force’s Inaugural Topics in Global Health Series
It’s flu season in the United States, and while flu causes more deaths and hospitalizations than any other vaccine-preventable disease in the country, most people don’t take it seriously. Last year in the US alone, an estimated 80,000 people died of the flu and its complications. Globally, according to the World Health Organization, as many… Read More

Global Health, Leadership, and Politics: Perspectives from Bill Foege
Global health luminary and The Task Force’s co-founder, Bill Foege, said public health leaders must be involved in the political process if they are to positively impact decisions made by government. “Every public health decision is based on some sort of political decision. You can’t separate them, and therefore we must understand how the political… Read More