By Chelsea Gish

The ASPIRE trial and The Ring Study, two large scale clinical trials, have found that microbicides can safely reduce the risk of new HIV infections in women.

A microbicide is any compound capable of destroying microbes and infectious agents. Recently, this method of prevention has become particularly relevant in reducing the transmission of HIV when applied to the vaginal or rectal region as a topical gel.

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By Karin Huster, MPH ('14)

This month marks two years since the first Ebola cases were confirmed in Guinea. The time has come for recollection and reflection, frank opinions and lessons learned. What did we do well? What should we have done differently? What has Ebola taught us? I spent 6 weeks in Liberia, 4 1/2 months in Sierra Leone, and 6 months in Guinea during the epidemic, working with Ebola patients and focusing on strategies to fight the disease. These thoughts come from the experiences that I had working in the field.

Second year MPH student Maria Artunduaga, MD, competed in the University of Washington’s Health Innovation Challenge in March as part of an interdisciplinary team of students from across campus including business, human centered design, occupational medicine, and health information management. Her team created a business proposal for an app that would help reduce fatal traffic accidents. She was inspired to focus on traffic injuries because of her field work in an emergency ward in Colombia last summer through the Thomas Francis Jr.

In response to huge demand by students and faculty, the University of Washington School of Nursing has launched a center to elevate and promote global health nursing activities both locally and abroad.