In December 2009, the UMass Amherst Center for International Education signed a contract to serve as independent evaluators for the Twaweza initiative, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Twaweza, meaning "we can make it happen" in Swahili, is a ten-year initiative funded by a consortium of five donors and hosted by the Dutch development organization Hivos.  Twaweza's overall goal is to foster citizen-driven change and to empower East African citizens (Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda) to advocate for access and quality of basic services in education, clean water and health.

Grounded in principles of complex adaptive systems, Twaweza creates strategic partnerships with existing networks and institutions to facilitate citizen access to information and to encourage action. Such partnerships embody a citizen-centered approach to development and public accountability and are promising alternative approaches for large-scale democratic change.  Twaweza describes its approach as fostering an ‘ecosystem of change’.

Principal Investigator Gretchen Rossman and Co-Principal Investigator David R. Evans, based at CIE, will lead the five-year evaluation, supporting an evaluation team based in Dar es Salaam. Martina Ochiel, a doctoral student at CIE, will serve as the Partnership Coordinator based in Dar.  She will work closely with the Mikala Lauridsen, the UMass Resident Manager, who will also be based in Dar. Ash Hartwell, Barbara Gravin Wilbur, and Konda Chavva are other key members of the CIE team in Amherst.

To implement the evaluation activities that include national household and facilities surveys and annual case studies in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, CIE has formed partnerships with three Universities: the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam; the Institute for Development Studies at University of Nairobi; and the Institute for Social Research at Makerere University in Kampala.  Thus the organization of the evaluation will mirror Twaweza’s partnership model by working with key faculty and post-graduate students at these Universities. The evaluation project is a $3 million, five year undertaking.

Collaboration between the UMass Center for International Education and the UMass Institute for Global Health (IGH) has resulted in a $5.4 million project funded by USAID to improve the quality of medical education and establish the first School of Public Health in Afghanistan.  The Higher Education Project – Medical Education (HEP-ME) was initiated in July 2009. Other project partners include the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Indiana University and the Academy for Educational Development.
 
The HEP-ME project has six major components: (1) creating a new MPH degree program; (2) revising existing public health courses in the undergraduate medical education program; (3) improving clinical rotations for medical students; (4) building capacity in English as a second language; (5) building capacity in information technologies, and (6) institutional development. 
 
In this project, the IGH has two major deliverables.  Kabul Medical University (KMU) recently completed a curriculum revision process resulting in the addition of seven new public health courses for all medical students in Afghanistan. As in many countries, Afghani students go straight from secondary school into a six-year medical degree program at age 18.  Although the new curriculum exists on paper, much work remains.  The team is working to help revise the seven undergraduate public health courses in time for the new semester in March 2010. This includes running short courses in Kabul to build faculty capacity to teach the classes,
 
The second major product is the design of a new, two-year, post-graduate Master of Public Health degree program.  The new Chancellor at KMU has initiated an ambitious plan to re-organize the medical university along Western lines, with a School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Dentistry, and a new School of Public Health.  He has appointed eight faculty members to serve as the core of the new public health program.  Within an eighteen-month time frame, the goal is to design the new two-year post-graduate degree program, shepherd its approval through the Ministry of Higher Education, and conduct sufficient faculty development in time to implement the new degree program January 2011.

For most of the past decade, Todd Fuller and Kirk Olson of Natural Resources Conservation (NRC) have been involved in a long-term wildlife ecology project concerned with Mongolian gazelles, Procapra gutturosa. Mongolian gazelles and their steppe habitat have been described as one of the largest remaining intact grazing systems in the world (Schaller, 1998). The gazelles are one of the world’s last abundant, nomadic ungulates and have endured decades of intense hunting, leading to population decline and regionally endangered status. They are further threatened by loss and fragmentation of habitat. Their current range is only 16% of their historic temperate grazing ecosystem (Tong et al. 2004).

Fuller, Olson and Craig Nicolson of NRC, and a team of scientists from Mongolia and the U.S., funded by NSF, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institutions, and the Wildlife Conservation Society and USAID, have employed a range of technologies including radio-telemetry, satellite imagery, computer modeling and on-the-ground observation to estimate the size of the remaining herd, its seasonal migration patterns, and the extent of suitable habitat. In September of 2007, while engaged in field work in Eastern Mongolia, Olson and colleagues encountered the largest aggregation of Mongolian gazelles ever recorded (Olson et al. 2009). Standing atop a hill with a 360-degree view and using a visible aggregation method, they estimated the herd within a 10 – 20 km radius at upwards of 250,000 animals.

The team then turned its attention to understanding the factors that can contribute to such unusually large animal aggregations, as individual animals may use ranges of up to 25,000 sq km. They employed a previously developed logistic model to predict gazelle concentrations on the basis of satellite-based estimates of relative vegetation productivity. The model accurately predicted locations where high concentrations of gazelles were found as well as low concentrations based on low vegetation productivity. Exceptions to the model seemed to occur only in areas with high mosquito abundance or disturbance caused by oil production activities.

While this unusual concentration of gazelles was encouraging and seemed to indicate the presence of a healthy herd, good habitat can vary significantly due to changes in annual precipitation. August of 2007 had been unusually wet, but during years of below average rainfall suitable grazing areas are more limited and may overlap with areas of insect abundance and human disturbance. Under those conditions, because of the loss of the majority of historic habitat, the gazelles are more likely to experience rapid decline due to lost fecundity, starvation and disease. Thus, evidence exists that Mongolia may have arrived at an important ecological crossroad. Efforts to encourage much needed economic development could easily result in further loss of habitat and degradation of the fragile steppe ecology. Only a landscape scale effort that will continue to allow access to all important grazing lands is likely to ensure adequate protection for one of the world’s last great ungulate populations.

(This article a summary of a longer article in 2009: Fauna and Flora International, Oryx, 43(1), 149-153, United Kingdom.)

Olson, Mueller, Bolortsetseg, Leimgruber, Fagan and Fuller. “A mega-herd of more than 200,000 Mongolian gazelles, Procapra gutturosa: a consequence of habitat quality”. Fauna and Flora International, Oryx, 43(1), 149-153, United Kingdom, 2009

Schaller, G.B. “Mongolia’s golden horde: a million migrating gazelles”. Wildlife Conservation, Nov/Dec, 36-41, 1998

Tong, Wu, Yong, Yang and Yong. “A landscape scale assessment of steppe degradation in the Xilin River Basin, Inner Mongolia, China”. Journal of Arid Environments, 59. 133-149, 2004

The UMass Amherst Institute for Global Health (IGH) received notification in September that they have been awarded a three year grant in support of a project with Novgorod State University (NovSU) in Russia on Advancing Public Health Sciences and Global Health Issues. Each of the two institutions will receive just under $400,000 over the next three years from the U.S. Department of Education and the Russian Federation Ministry of Education. The funding will support the exchange of 24 medical and public health students from Novgorod and UMass, faculty and curricula development, publication of a new public health text book in Russia, and the creation of a public health summer institute in Northwest Russia. This award marks the third international collaboration in the past 10 years between UMass Amherst and Novgorod State University, one of the top 15 classical universities in Russia.

The three year collaboration will be initiated with a week-long visit to UMass Amherst by 12 faculty members and medical students from NovSU in mid October. The visiting delegation will participate in special lectures, seminars, workshops and field visits organized by the IGH, the SBS Center for Communication in Sustainable Social Change, the Center for International Education and the Department of Educational Policy, Research and Administration. The delegation will also sit-in on regularly scheduled course in Public Health.

Since the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, Russia has experienced an unprecedented peace-time decline in life expectancy, especially among men. Combined with a precipitous decline in the nation’s fertility rate, there is great concern in Russia about the “demographic crisis” in Russia, where the nation is estimated to be losing between 750,000-1 million people each year, from a total population of approximately 140 million. Unchecked, Russia may lose as much as one-third of its population by the year 2050, with ominous implications for the future economic, political and social stability of the country. Novgorod Region has the 2nd highest mortality rate in Russia.

The project will be led by IGH Director David Buchanan and Dr. Viktor Veber, Rector of Novgorod State University, Director of its Medical Institute and a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Rick Taupier, Associate Director for International Research at UMass, and Elvira Kaminskaya, Director of International Programs at NovSU will serve as project managers. The first faculty exchange will take place in the fall of 2010 and student exchanges will begin in the fall of 2011. Students will participate in advanced Russian and English language courses as well as public health courses during their visits.