This year, Pepsi decided to forgo its annual Super Bowl commercial in favour of supporting an social media charity initiative called Pepsi Refresh.  Obviously, Pepsi’s interest is the bottom line, so the idea that a social media charity project is on par with a super bowl commercial in terms of advertising value is AMAZING to me.
But, at first glance, I wasn’t super impressed with their approach.  Apart from the usual debate about whether corporations can truly participate in charity without changing some of their own business practices (namely, a focus …

Tuesday January 19
FILM: Earth 2100 Film screening and discussion on climate change, peak oil and population growth. 6:30 pm. Free. Annette LIbrary, 145 Annette. green13toronto.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, January 20
LECTURE: Build Social Capital with Robert Campbell. 6:00pm-9:00pm. Centre for Social Innovation, Suite 120.
LECTURE: Allies In Protecting The Environment: First Nations And The Land Lecture by Six Nations Eco Centre manager Paul General. 7:30-9:30 pm. $12. Toronto Botanical Garden, 777 Lawrence E. nanps.org.
LECTURE: Canada’s Role In The Global Water Crisis Lecture. 4:10 pm. Free. U of T Faculty Club, 41 Willcocks. environment.utoronto.ca.
Thursday, January …

My day started with a very cool Event which happened right in my living room! I watched people from over 124 countries participate by giving their voice to fight HIV/AIDS with Starbucks. Singing “All you need is love” and submitting a video to the Starbucks Love website. Starbucks (Red) Campaign is contributing money to the global fight against AIDS using various marketing campaigns, drink donations and in store purchases.
Events This Week:
Monday, December 7:
50 Comics In 60 Minutes (Toronto Food Bank):
Comedians perform. 9 pm. $5. Dominion on Queen, 500 Queen E. …

FEATURED EVENT OF THE WEEK:
EVENT: Empower: Youth, Arts And Activism
World AIDS Day launch of an HIV/AIDS activism manual for youth with drag shows, visual art and more. Thursday, November 26. 6:00-9:00 pm. Free. William Doo Auditorium, 5 Willcocks. cuhi.admin@utoronto.ca.
CONFERENCE: Ivey Global Health Innovation Conference
Tuesday, November 24, 2009. 7:30 am -5:00 pm. The Fairmont Royal York. 100 Front St. W. Toronto. www.ivey.ca/ichil
SEMINAR: Research 2 Receptor Series - BioMass and Green Energy
Tuesday, November 24. 11:30 am - 6:00 pm. University of Guelph, Ridgetown Campus. Guelph Ontario. www.research2receptor.com/ridgetown.html
SUMMIT: Cultural Knowledge and the …

Young Voices in Research for Health 2009, an annual joint publication by the Global Forum on Health Research and the Lancet is just out, and here’s an excerpt of my contribution (you can also read the full article on Scribd or download the pdf if you want.)
The godparents of global health meeting at Alma Ata may not have had BlackBerrys or MacBooks, but if they were to meet again now, they would almost certainly include technology in their toolkits for promoting health for all.  In the next few pages, we …

I’m a strong believer in communication as a vehicle for change.  This might sound like a generic statement, but that’s just because I’m not as good of a communicator as I’d like to be.  I’ve been realizing that a lot of what I idolize in others is the power of communication.  Paul Farmer is great because he’s so good at explaining and contextualizing human rights and social justice in health.  And the fact that he leads by example communicates a lot as well.  James Orbinski’s wikipedia entry states that he …

FEATURED EVENT OF THE WEEK:

BLOG ACTION DAY 2009: Climate Change
Thursday October 15, 2009. Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices. www.blogactionday.org.
LECTURE: The Nuclear Question Physicians for Global Survival
Forum with physician/activist Helen Caldicott. Tuesday October 13, 2009. Noon-1:30 pm. …

Before travelling to Africa with Belinda Stronach a couple of summers ago, Rick Mercer vowed never to “come back from Africa like one of the arseholes on TV who won’t shut up about Africa”.  After reneging on that promise (which is fine with me!) the two of them started Spread the Net, a charity (obviously) focused on reducing the incidence of malaria through the purchase of bed nets (also obvious).
Mercer was here in Vancouver this week to promote Spread the Net’s Student Challenge, pitting high schools and universities against each …

Writing a paper on how global health governance and financing is changing made me aware of the influence the Gates Foundation has in setting the global health agenda.  As well as learning about its achievements, I also started learning about some of the critiques people have made of the Gates Foundation approach.
The Facts:
The Gates Foundation is a BIG player in global health.  In 2007, the Foundation’s endowment stood at over $60billion, an amount greater than the GDP of 70% of countries in the world.  The money goes to all sorts …

Last week I heard a very interesting presentation about a pattern that is emerging in Europe around the seizure of generic medicines. According to Percy Makombe from the Economic Justice Network presenting a paper at the Symposium on Health For All in an Interconnected World at York University, its possible to draw parallels between recent drug seizures (17 in Holland in 2008 alone) in Europe and the havoc being wrought by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.
Though the generic drug trade is legalized through the agreement on Trade Related Intellectual …