Health

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball legend and the NBA's all-time leading scorer, is asking his supporters to join him in taking a shot at beating cancer by joining his team — Team Kareem.

Abdul-Jabbar was diagnosised with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia. Now, he and Novartis Oncology have partnered with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) to create Team Kareem, a national team whose aim is to raise money for cancer research, through participation in LLS's annual Light The Night® Walk.

The mHealth Alliance, which comprises several nonprofit organizations seeking to improve health in underserved communities through sustainable mobile campaigns, has called for collaboration to accelerate the use of mobile and other modern information and communications technologies to improve maternal and newborn health in developing nations.

The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust awarded an $8.15 million grant to the Good Samaritan Society — the largest grant in the GSS history. The grant will be used to deliver sensor technology and telehealth services to help rural seniors age in place.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. raised $20 million for the Children's Miracle Network during a six-week campaign.

The United Health Foundation is providing more than $1.2 million in college scholarships to more than 200 students from diverse, multicultural backgrounds this coming school year.

PATH and the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) are teaming up to evaluate whether the latter’s emulsion adjuvants can boost the immune response to develop pandemic flu vaccines. PATH will provide the vaccine candidates and sponsor research at IDRI aimed at identifying promising vaccine-adjuvant combinations.

“The collaboration is an important step toward enhancing the cost-effectiveness of influenza vaccines and expanding their availability to low-resource countries that would not otherwise be able to access them,” remarks Kathleen Neuzil, M.D., director of PATH’s influenza vaccine project.

WASHINGTON, D.C. and AUSTIN, TX., 16 June 2010 — ShowStoppers® today announced it is working with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health to provide a range of media, marketing and sales services for the 2010 mHealth Summit – a high-level international event focused on accelerating the use of mobile technologies for medical research, information, diagnosis, treatment and care in the developed and developing worlds, including the U.S.

The 2010 mHealth Summit is a partnership of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), the mHealth Alliance and the National Institutes of Health. The Summit is the leading U.S. conference advancing cross-sector collaboration in the use of wireless technology to improve health outcomes. This annual event, in its second year, returns with an expanded format that includes a networking event for funding; concurrent sessions in research, technology and mFinance; as well as an exhibit floor featuring the latest technologies.

CBS 3 is once again takin the unusual step of breaking format on Thursday, June 11th to present a full day of fundraising for the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation live from the Great Hall in the station's HD Broadcast Center.

The Alex Scott Phone Bank will air in special segments from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. throughout the broadcast day.

NEW YORK, JUNE 2, 2010  – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the VII Photo agency today launched “Starved for Attention,” a global multimedia campaign presenting a unique and new perspective of childhood malnutrition, a preventable and treatable condition that nonetheless claims the lives of millions of children each year.  

The collaboration challenges established notions of malnutrition through a seven-part mini-documentary series; clichéd images are substituted with those of parents and health workers struggling to meet the nutritional needs of young, growing children.  Starved for Attention highlights how increased childhood sickness and early death can be prevented with effective nutritional interventions. The campaign launch coincides with the onset of a particularly harsh “hunger gap” season in Africa’s Sahel region, the period when staple food crops run out before the next harvest and malnutrition typically increases. 

NEW YORK, 2 June 2010 — The Ford Foundation today announced a $25 million effort to fight the disproportionate yet largely hidden impact of HIV/AIDS on marginalized communities in the United States.

The initiative will target the District of Columbia and nine states in the South that rank among the highest in new AIDS cases. It will also support efforts to address the spread of HIV among African Americans, women and Latinos. The effort will build upon investments made by Ford over the past several years to address the impact of HIV in these communities and to fight the discrimination that allows the epidemic to spread. It is informed by decades of Ford work tackling difficult human rights issues facing highly marginalized communities.