Fall 2020 Speaker Panel Highlights
END Initiative general information
The END Initiative aims to raise awareness and funds for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), a group of 20 diseases that affect 1 in 7 people worldwide. Though they affect more than one billion people, NTDs receive little to no attention because they disproportionately affect the world’s poorest populations. In fact, every low-income country in the world is affected by at least 5 NTDs simultaneously.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Pharmaceutical companies have and will continue to donate millions of medications that can protect people from the five most common NTDs: schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, roundworm, hookworm, and whipworm. Public health organizations, both in the United States and abroad, are working alongside these pharmaceutical companies to administer these medications to communities across the world via Mass Drug Administration (MDA) programs. These programs are incredibly efficacious, in that it only takes 50¢ to administer them. For the change in your pocket, you can save someone’s life.
At the END Initiative, we hope to increase awareness of NTDs at Northeastern and encourage students to donate their spare change to this incredible cause. All proceeds from our fundraisers go straight to Deworm the World, one of GiveWell’s most efficacious charities in eliminating NTDs. We host numerous fundraising events, we organize advocacy events to ensure NTDs are no longer being ignored in American politics, and we invite NTD and infectious disease experts to give their insight on NTDs in the global health field.
Speaker Panel Highlight
Earlier this month, we hosted our annual speaker panel event. This year, amid the global pandemic, our theme was infectious diseases and their impact on public health policy. We invited Dr. Samuel Scarpino, a Northeastern professor who has modelled the epidemiology of numerous infectious diseases, including SARS-CoV-2 and various NTDs; Dr. Larry Madoff, the director of the infectious diseases department at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health; Dr. Natasha Hochberg, a Boston University professor who has worked with several infectious diseases abroad and in the clinic here in Boston. The panelists shared their career path, their insight on the changing state of NTDs in global health, and their hope for more and more students to join the field and erase the “neglected” out of “neglected tropical diseases.”
Contact Information
If you are interested in joining the END Initiative and helping us eradicate NTDs, you can sign up for our email list HERE (https://forms.gle/tKJYSqgJ5drms4US7). We meet every Wednesday at 6pm. For the time being, we are only meeting virtually via Zoom and the link can be found in our weekly newsletter. Follow us on Instagram (@endinitiativenu), Facebook (@ENDInitaitiveNU), or check out our website (https://web.northeastern.edu/endinitiative/) to learn more about NTDs and the END Initiative!
