Bay Area Bixby Nexus Workshop Friday, February 21, 2014, David Brower Center, Berkeley, CA Welcome to the first Bay Area Bixby Nexus Workshop by Dr. Ndola Prata, Bixby Endowed Chair and Director, Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability, UC Berkeley. It is a pleasure for Berkeley to host the first Bay Area Bixby Nexus Workshop! It is important for both Bixby Centers to think about how we can work together in ways that capitalize on the unique strengths and abilities of each center. The goal of the first Bay Area Bixby Nexus Workshop was to get to know one another and to launch, the Bay Area Bixby Nexus, new collaborative between the UCB and UCSF Bixby Centers, and this series of associated quarterly meetings of Bay Area Bixby researchers. Our inaugural efforts began with mapping our respective research agendas and identifying common themes and opportunities for collaboration during this workshop. Page 1 of 7
Special Welcoming Remarks by Dr. Stef Bertozzi, Dean, UC Berkeley School of Public Health It is especially exciting to participate in the first Bay Area Bixby Nexus Workshop at this time, as Berkeley s School of Public Health begins a process of strategic planning. Increasingly, people are asking: what are the big plays that require action and participation by multidisciplinary groups of researchers? This is an opportunity to think about potential collaborations on our joint domains. What projects would be made stronger by a joint Bixby effort than by either Bixby Center on its own? How do we bring our very exciting ideas and projects to scale? The job of the Dean is to ensure that the administration is not an obstacle to collaboration but to channel limited resources into big, transformative ideas. The Bixby Centers can and should spend some of our time today identifying what those big ideas are and what capabilities we have to achieve those ideas. Page 2 of 7
UCSF Bixby Overview Dr. Phil Darney, Director Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, UCSF The two Bay Area Bixby Centers, along with other foundations and researchers, have helped to establish a presence on the west coast of successful reproductive health, women s rights, and family planning organizations. The UCSF Bixby Center began as a center for reproductive epidemiology, but has since expanded, adding emphases on health policy and other disciplines. The UCSF Bixby Center currently has 175 faculty implementing 100 projects around the world (including an ongoing presence in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Nepal), with expertise in a wide variety of research disciplines. Program areas include family planning, evaluation, abortion care, adolescent and young adult reproductive health, safe motherhood, HIV and STIs, and training and fellowships. UC Berkeley Bixby Overview Dr. Ndola Prata, Bixby Endowed Chair and Director Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability, UC Berkeley The goals of Berkeley s Bixby Center are to improve global public health, maternal health, and the ecological sustainability. The Center is currently comprised of 24 core members, including doctoral fellows, associate fellows, associate faculty, researchers, staff, GSIs and GSRs, and summer interns. The Center has three main research areas: 1) OASIS (Organizing to Advance Solutions in the Sahel) led by Malcolm Potts, which focuses on girls education and empowerment, family planning, adapting agriculture to climate change; 2) Investing in girls, led by Daniel Perlman, which implements strategies to encourage girls to stay in school; and 3) Family planning, safe abortion, and maternal health, led by Ndola Prata. Page 3 of 7
Interactive Mapping Exercise Facilitated by Dr. Nap Hosang and Dr. Ushma Upadhyay All participants were asked to write down research topics, themes, or interests on individual - color-coded extra-large post-its (yellow for Berkeley and green for UCSF participants). Facilitators then asked volunteers to come to the front of the room in small groups and arrange their post-its on the wall to logically reflect common topics or areas of collaboration. This was an iterative process, with participants frequently revising the groupings of topics and interests. In the end, individual topics and ideas were grouped in two ways, first according to topic or crosscutting theme. Mapping Results: Topics: HIV/STIs; abortion; safe motherhood; nutrition/food security; girls /women s empowerment; family planning/contraception Cross-cutting themes: youth; training; policy; funding; social behavioral; delivery mechanisms; least developed countries, social/behavioral aspects of RH. Page 4 of 7
Break-out Group Sessions for Discussion of Topics and Cross-Cutting Issues Participants grouped themselves around tables according to topics they were most interested in, and spent the lunch hour coming up with three ideas for how the two centers could work together to further goals related to their topic. After the lunch hour, participants reorganized themselves according to cross-cutting themes and repeated the exercise. Ideas from the First Working Group Session on Topics Family Planning/Contraception 1. Have MPH students (UCB and others) visit UCSF clinics to learn about/observe FP/SA. a. For example, send students from the FP class, MCH core course, etc. Not just to clinics, but also programs that reach marginalized populations, like the homeless prenatal clinic, etc. 2. Video messaging/visuals to promote IUDs (some UCSF folks have experience with this, and some UCB folks are looking to implement something like this internationally) 3. Psychosocial factors in decision making (including sex) joint research endeavor (lit review which might lead to grant writing, actually incorporating sex, itself, into the work that we do) a. People who work in the sex industry could have something useful to say about safe sex and preventing unintended pregnancy Page 5 of 7
Nutrition, Food Security, Safe Motherhood 1. Collaborate with economists to quantify cost of: 1) junk food on health care system; 2) adolescent childbearing/unintended pregnancy on humanitarian relief 2. Collaborate with Stan Glantz and team to apply tobacco strategies to junk food like regulations, taxing, education a. Association of junk food and premature birth an issue that could be studied epidemiologically locally in Oakland 3. Collaborate between campuses on maternal mortality. Success on misoprostol and Life Wrap opportunity for scaling these, as well as some synergies Abortion 1. Symposium on global abortion issues a. Ideally co-organized by UCB/UCSF, potentially focused on addressing research, policy, practice, advocacy, implementation, strategy b. Potential attendees: researchers, donors, policy, in-country partners, advocates c. Aims: examine where we are so far with abortion policy and practice and where we need to go, highlight capabilities, donor call-to-action 2. Collaborate on improving tracking/measuring of abortion complications a. Establishing a working group to define needs and concerns (of providers, researchers, advocates?) around adoption/promotion of systematic classification system similar to adverse event reporting for other common procedures b. Identifying challenges in abortion research and exchange of lessons learned/novel strategies to make abortion research more feasible/rigorous despite challenges. Girls /Women s Empowerment, HIV/STIs (NOTE: all of these are not necessarily concrete possible activities for field implementation, but issues we could explore in short papers) 1. Increase FP access and utilization among girls in various geographies (particularly among those with an unmet need for family planning) 2. Intervene with key funders and stakeholders to create social change around girls empowerment and increased investment in girls (create enabling environment, further community understanding) 3. Empower girls to be the agents of social change Ideas from the Second Working Group Session on Cross-Cutting Ideas Youth Important insight: emotional/brain development is not always taken into account when dealing with youth but it is important not to lose sight of this in youth research and programming. Recommendations or possible activities: 1. Hire grad student to conduct a landscape analysis of current adolescent SRH projects and policies to understand interventions better in order to identify missed opportunities. 2. Form working group to identify where and how to intervene 3. Develop multi-country youth-focused proposal (domestic and global) Policy, Funding, Training, and Least Developed Countries 1. Easy potential collaborations: Page 6 of 7
a. Plan Lectures across campus b. Arrange grad student exchanges c. Establish and fund fellows in LDCs for national FP fellowships 2. Specific projects (perhaps for a bit later than ideas in #1, maybe 1-2 years? later): a. Measure Affordable Care Act impact on provision of FP services (e.g. access to services, quality of care, fertility, unmet need for family planning) b. Design and promote strategic communication of research for policy, training, funding Social/Behavioral Aspects 1. Establish and maintain a central repository for tools/measures across UCSF/UCB. Perhaps, piggyback on Center for Expertise of Women s Empowerment efforts Center for Expertise of Women s Empowerment, or compile this information totally independently ourselves. Collect/document tools that exist, and develop new tools/instruments collaboratively. 2. Promote: cross-fertilization of domestic and international social/behavioral work, especially on abortion. (Berkeley Bixby and especially ANSIRH/SFGH from UCSF) 3. Address and mitigate stigma/professional isolation of providers and their support staff...need to work with providers to encourage the value and valor of their work. Next Steps and Action Items Facilitated by Dr. Ndola Prata and Dr. Craig Cohen We have done a lot to get started on some potential collaboration. We should continue get together to develop ideas and potential project to propose to for funders and partner with other stakeholders. Each small group delegated one or two people (ideally one person from UCB and one from UCSF) to move some of these great ideas forward. For example, Craig volunteered to coordinate the group on empowerment and HIV/STIs from the first set of discussions. Ndola and Heather volunteered to coordinate the group on abortion from the first set of discussions. Groups agreed to work together to identify which idea(s) they would like to move forward with and to make a plan for doing so. Other important, timely issues that we should continue to pursue together: domestic family planning issues here in CA provider and patient education tools for LARC The two centers can also work together to connect people who are interested in our work with opportunities to get involved. We typically seek out and promote such opportunities within our own campuses, but we could promote more cross-campus connections. These are just some of the many creative and important ideas discussed at this first Bay Area Bixby Nexus Workshop. Let s work together to move these ideas forward, and report back on our progress at the next meeting. Page 7 of 7