Genius Grants Winners Tackle Infectious Diseases, Child Health

by Mike Smith · 2009-09-22 13:14:00 UTC
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Given five years and half a million dollars, how would you effect a change to global health? It's not all about the money of course, but wow — it can certainly help. The MacArthur Genius Grants have been announced for the year: 24 people who will each receive half a million dollars with no strings attached. There's a couple of winners working in the global health space that are worth highlighting.

Esther Duflo has a very interesting and broad career working as an economist whose field-work combines with rigorous empirical analysis to conclude things like "pension transfers to grandmothers, rather than grandfathers, brought about the greatest improvement in the health of girls." She has also used a cross-disciplinary approach to understand the effect of pollution from traditional, solid-fuel cooking stoves. See her speaking at a recent New Yorker event.

Jill Seaman works on delivering and improving treatments for infectious diseases. She works extensively in Southern Sudan, fighting an epidemic of visceral leishmaniasis for almost a decade. She stayed on in Sudan after Doctors Without Borders left in order to set up her own organization. The MacArthur foundation explain that she "serves as a pioneering authority on how to provide life-saving medical care in all but impossible conditions." See her explaining her work in this video.

Both present innovative, on-the-ground answers and solutions, and it will be interesting to see how the work of this collection of extraordinary people is helped by a big injection of cash.

[Photo credit: Pathology of infectious diseases]

Mike Smith
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