Research Posters

Oxygen therapy is an essential part of emergency neonatal care that can provide great benefit to neonates suffering from hypoxia (1).  However, the use of oxygen therapy in neonates comes with risks. In the post-World War II era retinopathy of prematurity in premature infants was a leading cause of blindness in Europe and North America, with unmonitored oxygen therapy as the major risk factor (2). Some have argued that we are now in another epidemic of retinopathy of prematurity, occurring due to the rampant unmonitored oxygen therapy on premature infants in low and low-middle income countries (3).  In this pragmatic review, we aim to evaluate the peer-reviewed literature of low and low-middle income countries to summarize the state of neonatal oxygen therapy, identify areas of needed quality improvement, and identify where further research is needed.

A school-level map of inclusive WaSH facilities offers valuable insights to students with special needs, general public, policy makers and funding agencies. Creation of such map requires extensive data collection with periodic feedback. Our research work explores the feasibility of such mapping and monitoring of inclusive WaSH facilities at schools in developing nations.

•Refugees have been resettled in the Buffalo region for over the past ten years.

About 10% of infants require some assistance to establish regular respirations at birth [1] sometimes leading to an inadequate intake of oxygen by the infant called perinatal asphyxia. Here, hypoxic–ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) due to acute perinatal asphyxia remains an important cause of neurodevelopmental deficits in childhood [2]. The first effective treatment for moderate to severe HIE is therapeutic hypothermia (TH) that has reduced death and disability [3,4]. However, a significant subset of mild HIE who are currently not recognized or offered any therapies develop cognitive impairment [5]. Here, a “Neurovascular Unit” approach [6] in newborns with HIE has been proposed to identify infants at risk for abnormal outcomes [7]. We are developing computational tools for a low-cost portable brain scanner to capture the neurovascular coupling (NVC) within the “Neurovascular Unit” [8].

Infections by the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans cause hundreds of thousands of deaths per year in the context of HIV infection in resource-poor areas of the world. Existing drugs are ineffective and access is limited. Our interests lie in strategies to augment the activity of existing antifungal drugs.

Household air pollution causes nearly four million premature deaths per year, primarily among poor women and children in low- and middle-income countries (Rosenthal et al., 2017, Lim et al. 2012). Transitions away from solid fuels improve indoor air quality, directly benefitting the health of women and children in the first two years of life. It remains unclear how to catalyze widespread and sustained fuel transitions, despite countless fuel transition case studies at the local level. This proposal will use mixed methods to identify enabling environments for household fuel transitions by examining both successful and unsuccessful transition attempts.

Human exposure to As and its compounds occurs primarily through ingestion of As-contaminated food and water. About 200 million people worldwide are exposed to As levels exceeding the international limit of 10 µg/L in water. Among children, exposure to As is associated with deficits in intelligence, neurobehavioral function, and development.

Air pollutants emitted from “found wood” are often  associated with early infant mortality. Respirable components from wood smoke require collection and analysis to aid in the determination of mechanisms of biohazards and their elimination.

The World Health Organization has identified indoor air pollution as a major health concern in developing countries. We conducted a systematic review to characterize the relationship between indoor air pollution and maternal and newborn health outcomes to the extent they have been explored in the existing literature.

Global Surgery:

Childhood Diarrhea Facts

Many rural regions of Africa are characterized by extensive individual-level multilingualism. A typical adult may speak several local languages, as well languages of wider communication such as French or English. Little is known about how language choice affects the reception and understanding of messages related to health in these parts of the world.

The world’s newest country, South Sudan, has experienced international and domestic conflicts since its secession from the Republic of Sudan in 2011. Fighting began in early July 2016 forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee to Kenya, Sudan, and other regions within South Sudan, but primarily Uganda. 

United Youth is a mentoring program that facilitates mutually beneficial relationships between newly arrived, high school aged refugee students and role-model refugee students of the same background from their community.

The purpose of this program is to enable UB students to understand a different system of public health by studying Brazil’s free, universal public health system. Brazilian students are also given the opportunity to study the U.S. system of health care.

The Community of Excellence in Global Health Equity (CGHE) has partnered with the UB Academies (now the Experiential Learning Network) and academic units ranging from Romance Languages and Literatures to Civil Engineering to integrate the scholarship of CGHE faculty into the academic lives of UB’s undergraduates. Academic programs, co-curricular activities, and mentoring all help undergraduates translate classroom learning into lived experience.

•World Health Organization (WHO) estimates a shortage of 12.9 million health care workers (HCWs) by the year 2035, an increase from 7.2 million in 2013.