Two Stanford graduates with close ties to FSI’s centers have been named 2012 Rhodes Scholars. A third was selected as a Mitchell Scholar.

Anand Habib was a graduate of the 2011 CISAC honors program in international security studies and a 2010 Dachs undergraduate intern. Habib and Katherine Niehaus – who is now a research assistant for a CHP/PCOR project evaluating whether HIV medication increases the risk of cardiovascular disease – will study at the University of Oxford in England under the Rhodes program. 

Philippe de Koning, who will study in Ireland as a Mitchell fellow, wrote a manuscript about Japan’s defense and financial crisis with Shorenstein APARC faculty member Phillip Lipscy. Lipscy, a political scientist, was de Koning’s advisor through his undergraduate career and also advised him on his senior thesis. De Koning was also a 2010 CISAC honors student.

More about the scholars:

Anand R. Habib, 22, of Houston, Texas, is a 2011 graduate of Stanford, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with honors in international security studies. He plans to pursue a master's degree in public policy and in medical anthropology at Oxford.

Habib is working on community health programs at St. Joseph's Clinic in Thomassique, Haiti, under a one-year global health fellowship awarded by Medical Missionaries. The nonprofit organization is a volunteer group of more than 200 doctors, nurses, dentists, and others who work to improve the health of the poor in the United States and throughout the world.

In 2011, he won a Deans' Award for Academic Accomplishment, which honors extraordinary undergraduate students for "exceptional, tangible" intellectual achievements. One of the professors who nominated him for the award described him as a "superb critical thinker" whose work is characterized by "creative genius" and "mature insights," adding that he "exemplifies exactly the kind of deeply informed, pragmatic and caring leadership that the world needs and Stanford enables."

As a Stanford student, Habib worked on behalf of politically and medically disenfranchised people in India, Mexico and Guatemala. His field research internship in Guatemala’s indigenous region during summer 2010 was carried out under the supervision of Paul Wise, professor of pediatrics and FSI senior fellow, as part of FSI’s Dachs mentored undergraduate research program.  On campus, he turned the Stanford tradition of the annual Dance Marathon into a vehicle dedicated to addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic by engaging not only Stanford students but also local communities and corporations, raising more than $100,000. His exceptional work was recognized by his participation in the Clinton Global Initiative University Conference in April, 2011.

Katherine "Kate" Niehaus, 23, of Columbia, S.C., earned a bachelor's degree in biomechanical engineering in 2010 and a master's degree in bioengineering in 2011 – both at  Stanford. Her class and research work focused on biomechanics and her interests lie in its applications to high technology entrepreneurship.

She plans to pursue a doctorate of philosophy in systems approaches to biomedical science at Oxford.

At Stanford, Niehaus captained Stanford's varsity track and cross country teams, won the Pac-10 5,000 meters, and won Academic-All American status. She also served as a mentor and tutor for students in low-income families.

Working with faculty in the Center for Health Policy, Kate led a project to evaluate how well newer HIV antiretroviral drugs work compared with older drugs.  Her work was among the first to evaluate comprehensively all of the trials of new drugs in treatment of experienced patients, and showed that these drugs have substantial benefits.

Philippe de Koning, 22, of Paris, France, earned a bachelor's degree in international relations at Stanford in 2010. He plans to pursue a master's degree in international security and conflict resolution at Dublin City University.

He is a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, D.C. The nongovernmental organization works to prevent nuclear, chemical, and biological threats from materializing. De Koning is researching nuclear materials security and the U.S.-China dialogue on nuclear issues.

De Koning, who earlier was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, spent the 2010-2011 academic year at Hiroshima University in Japan. He examined various components of Japanese security policy, with emphasis on current evolution of Japanese Self-Defense Forces, policies on nuclear issues and approaches toward peacekeeping.

In 2009, he was a member of the Stanford delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

As markets around the world slump, sputter and slump again, China maintains the fastest-growing economy. But despite the country’s boom, it has fallen behind in making sure its children will be healthy, strong and smart enough to cash in on it.

About 30 percent of children living in China’s rural areas are anemic – sick with an iron deficiency that Stanford researcher Scott Rozelle and his colleagues with the Rural Education Action Project have proven leads to bad school performance. And a poor education coupled with anemia’s physical blow puts those kids at risk for lives of poverty and missed opportunities.

But things are changing. Influenced in part by the research Rozelle has conducted and presented to Chinese officials, the government recently launched a policy to improve school lunches for about 20 million children across the country.

The plan invests $2.5 billion a year during the next nine years to ensure the meals are more nutritious for elementary and middle school students. That doubles the amount spent on lunches for China’s neediest children.

“For 5,000 years it was OK to be anemic if you're never going to leave the farm," said Rozelle, an economist and senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies who is still experimenting with ways to improve children's health in rural China and get the government to adopt the most effective methods.

"But we're looking 20 years into the future where there are much fewer farms and you need at least a high school education to make a living in the city,” Rozelle said. “If you are sick with anemia, it is going to affect your cognitive ability, educational performance and ultimately your chances of going on in school."

Rozelle began studying anemia and its links to school performance in 2008.

After conducting an initial study of about 4,000 primary school students in Shaanxi province, he found that nearly 40 percent of the children were anemic – the result of diets that consisted mostly of rice and noodles in regions where meat, fruit and fresh vegetables are expensive and often hard to come by.

Those survey results were presented to the government in a 2009 policy brief written by Rozelle and his collaborators. Officials adopted the brief, making rural primary school nutrition part of China’s official policy discussion.

A second study conducted between 2008 and 2009 found that anemia rates dropped when schoolchildren were given vitamins fortified with iron. And as their iron levels rose, so did their test scores.

An experiment followed to back up those findings, while another set of large-scale surveys across four provinces reinforced that childhood anemia was indeed a widespread problem.

The findings from those surveys and tests were packaged in another policy brief that was accepted by the government earlier this year, prompting a government directive urging more concrete action in the area of student nutrition.

Those documents, along with several presentations Rozelle has made to government officials and commissions, have culminated in a move to pour $22.5 billion into more nutritious school lunches between now and 2020. It will likely be up to local government and school officials to decide exactly what those meals will include, but Rozelle is hopeful they’ll lead to diets with more meat, vegetables and iron supplements.

“Research-based results are an important avenue for affecting policy in China,” said Chen Zhili, vice chair of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and a former minister of education. “The new programs for child nutrition were only made possible by the work of groups (like the Rural Education Action Project).”

And a national policy aimed at improving nutrition and curbing anemia helps ensure that China maintains its foothold in the world’s economy and grow in a more stable, equitable way, Rozelle said.

“The social return is huge,” Rozelle said. “These kids will be able to do better in school, work harder and sustain China’s growth.”

Congratulations to Anand Habib, selected this weekend for a Rhodes Scholarship. Habib, 22, of Houston, Texas, is a 2011 graduate of Stanford, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with honors in international security studies. He plans to pursue a master's degree in public policy and in medical anthropology at Oxford.

Habib is currently working on community health programs at St. Joseph's Clinic in Thomassique, Haiti, under a one-year global health fellowship awarded by Medical Missionaries. The nonprofit organization is a volunteer group of more than 200 doctors, nurses, dentists, and others who work to improve the health of the poorest of the poor in the United States and throughout the world.

In 2011, he won a Deans' Award for Academic Accomplishment which honors extraordinary undergraduate students for "exceptional, tangible" intellectual achievements. One of the professors who nominated him for the award described him as a "superb critical thinker" whose work is characterized by "creative genius" and "mature insights," adding that he "exemplifies exactly the kind of deeply informed, pragmatic and caring leadership that the world needs and Stanford enables."

As a Stanford student, Habib worked on behalf of politically and medically disenfranchised people in India, Mexico and Guatemala. On campus, he turned the Stanford tradition of the annual Dance Marathon into a vehicle dedicated to addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic by engaging not only Stanford students but also local communities and corporations, raising more than $100,000. His exceptional work was recognized by his participation in the Clinton Global Initiative University Conference in April, 2011.

From Haiti, Habib discussed his current position, his plans in Oxford, and how his CISAC thesis relates to his work. 

What are you currently working on? 

I am currently working on a global health fellowship with an NGO that operates a clinic in Haiti's Central Plateau. As part of the fellowship I am helping to manage a number of community and public health projects including fortified salt (to counter iodine deficiency and filariasis), a point-of-use potable water system, a malnutrition intervention program, and a small system of community health committees and community health workers. For the past two months, I've taken on a number of administrative functions along with my co-fellow, who is also a recent college graduate. I started the fellowship shortly after graduation at the end of June 2011 and I am slated to be in Haiti until the end of June 2012.

What will you do at Oxford?

I proposed two one-year Masters programs: a masters in public policy from Oxford's new Blavatnik School of Government, and an M.Sc. in medical anthropology. As of now, I'm thinking of sticking with my proposed programs -- probably pursuing the medical anthropology degree first as it is a bit more theoretical. I think it would be better to have the more "academic" experience first before gaining the practical tools that an MPP will hopefully afford me. After a short send-off in Washington, D.C., at the end of September 2012, I will fly with the other American Rhodes Scholars-elect to Oxford the first week of October with term beginning shortly thereafter.

How does your work in the CISAC Honors program relate to what you are currently doing, your plans for Oxford, or what you'll be doing afterward? 

My honors thesis has allowed me to contextualize my experiences in Haiti in some fairly amazing ways. Two very persistent issues in Haiti are that of poor governance -- e.g. lack of strong regulatory structures, lack of government effectiveness, etc. -- and ineffective aid modalities, or the ways in which aid is delivered. My thesis was situated exactly at this nexus: how to deliver aid more effectively in order to improve governance. Ninety-nine percent of relief aid after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was funneled to non-state organizations and only 12 percent of recovery aid went toward supporting government activities. In Haiti, I've witnessed how detrimental a patchwork system of NGO activity can be with little coordination between NGOs and little harmonization of NGO activities with government objectives. It becomes very frustrating at times, because, if my thesis is any indication, things need not be this way if both NGOs and states were engaged in collaborative partnerships -- along the lines of what Dr. Paul Farmer, deputy U.N. special envoy to Haiti, calls "accompaniment."

My initial interest in the topic of global health financing was spurred by work out of Oxford's Global Economic Governance Project. The director of the project, Dr. Ngaire Woods, was actually named the Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government through which the MPP is offered. I'd love to continue exploring the issues broached in my thesis at Oxford -- especially issues of aid effectiveness and sustainable systems of delivering development aid for health. In the future, I hope to become a physician-policymaker, helping to not only deliver care to individuals in difficult conditions around the world, but also in fostering more robust global health governance.

- Interview by Michael Freedman

 

When Siyan Yi was a medical student in Cambodia 12 years ago, he volunteered with a collaborative government-NGO project to provide young women at high risk for HIV/AIDS—the victims of sexual exploitation—with housing, vocational training, medical care, and psychological support. Cambodia at that time had one of Asia’s highest HIV-infection rates.

That rate has dropped by half, thanks to government policy measures, international NGO support, and the efforts of medical professionals like Yi. Cambodia’s government must now find ways to curb HIV infection in new segments of the population, says Yi, who is the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center’s inaugural Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow. Sustaining funding for the long-term care of HIV-infected individuals also poses a future challenge, he explains, and new health issues associated with development are beginning to crop up.

Cambodia’s first HIV case was detected in 1991 in a blood donor, and the rate of HIV/AIDS increased dramatically throughout the decade. HIV/AIDS hit Thailand slightly earlier, and was spread through the commercial sex trade. The epidemic reached an even greater scale there than it ever did in Cambodia.

Thailand’s government struck back with a 100-percent condom use promotion program, which Cambodia successfully adopted in the late 1990s. Brothels are illegal in Cambodia, but the government worked cooperatively with owners to provide basic HIV/AIDS education to sex workers. These efforts significantly reduced the transmission of HIV.

Since then, a more indirect form of prostitution has sprung up in places such as karaoke halls, massage parlors, restaurants, and even in factories. HIV prevalence remains high among some sentinel groups such as female sex workers, beer promoters, men who have sex with men (MSM), injected-drug users, and migrant workers.

Yi advocates that the government expand the scope of its HIV/AIDS prevention programs to encompass these new at-risk populations. He even suggests that the government consider creating a system of licensed brothels such as previously existed in Hong Kong and Taiwan. “It would provide the government with an easier means of controlling prostitution, and allow it to work with brothel owners to control HIV-infection rates,” states Yi.

HIV increases the risk of contracting or developing symptoms of tuberculosis; a large proportion of Cambodia’s population carries the disease but shows no signs of it. Tuberculosis went largely undetected during the decades of the Khmer Rouge regime, but with the advent of HIV/AIDS it has become more prevalent. Yi has been involved in government-NGO projects to provide tuberculosis screening for HIV patients, including a tuberculosis control project with the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Tuberculosis screening and HIV treatment advances may greatly prolong the life—and even improve the health—of patients. But heartening as Cambodia’s success against HIV/AIDS has proven in the past decade, the government largely bears the responsibility for funding the expensive treatment and care for the low-income individuals most affected by it. A critical portion of government funding for its HIV/AIDS prevention programs comes from external organizations. 

“I think that the main issue for the government of Cambodia in the battle against HIV and AIDS is financial sustainability,” says Yi, who worries that donor agencies will withdraw support as the HIV-infection rate continues to improve. Prevention is less expensive, he explains, but long-term care is costly to a developing country such as Cambodia.

Yi, however, feels less concerned now about the HIV/AIDS epidemic and speaks hopefully of working to help the government find ways to measure and treat non-communicable diseases associated with economic development, such as diabetes and hypertension. While he is at Stanford, he will collaborate with Asia Health Policy Program researchers to move his work toward solving Cambodia’s new health challenges.

Blaming leaders in America and abroad for not doing enough to combat climate change, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said continued failure to tackle the problem will result in worldwide hunger, social unrest and political turmoil.

“Without action at the global level to address climate change, we will see farmers across Africa – and in many other parts of the world including here in America – forced to leave their land,” the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize winner told a crowd of about 1,400 people at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on Thursday. “The result will be mass migration, growing food shortages, loss of social cohesion and even political instability.”

Citing numbers from the World Bank, Annan said rapidly rising food prices since 2010 have “pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty.” He called a lack of food security for nearly 1 billion of the world’s population “an unconscionable moral failing” that is also a stumbling block to a strong international economy.

“It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth,” he said.

Annan’s talk, “Food Security Is a Global Challenge,” was delivered as part of a daylong conference on global underdevelopment sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The event drew the world’s leading experts in the field and featured panel discussions that explored the connections between global security and food supplies, health care and governance. Keynote speeches were delivered by Annan and Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also planned to deliver a talk to a private audience.

The conference marked the launch of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

“With this facility, and the creative thinkers and inquisitive minds for which Stanford is famous, you are well-equipped to undertake research which advances our knowledge and helps to shape our response to the many global challenges we face,” Annan said. “And with the resources at your disposal, you also have the capacity to actively engage to influence policy, implement solutions and thus improve the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet.”

Annan also lauded government initiatives such as America’s Feed the Future program that focus on alleviating global hunger. He recently met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Raj Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to discuss ways to address food insecurity.

“If we pool our efforts and resources, we can finally break the back of this problem,” he said.

But he challenged wealthier nations to do more than pay lip service to the problem.

“We need to make sure that promises of extra support from richer countries are kept and involve fresh funds rather than the repackaging of existing financial commitments,” he said.

Annan, who is the chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, the Africa Progress Panel, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, said Africa represents both the greatest problem and the greatest promise when it comes to food security.

The continent is home to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, but cannot produce enough food to feed its own people, he said. But if Africa can grow just half the world’s average yield of staple crops like wheat, corn and rice, it would end up with a food surplus.

Transforming Africa into one of the world’s biggest crop producers will take more than supporting farmers, he said. It entails sound environmental stewardship.

 “I hope this is an area where the Center on Food Security and the Environment can make a major contribution to finding solutions,” Annan said.

Without those solutions, the future is bleak.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where global warming brings the threat of persistent drought, current crop production is expected to be cut in half by the end of the century and 8 percent of the region’s fertile land is expected to dry up.

“Those arguing, here and elsewhere, for urgent action and a focus on opportunities to green our economies still find themselves drowned out by those with short-term and vested interests,” Annan said. “This lack of long-term collective vision and leadership is inexcusable. It has global repercussions, and it will be those least responsible for climate change – the poorest and most vulnerable – that will pay the highest price.”

Annan's speech was sponsored by FSI, Stanford in Government and the Stanford University Speakers Bureau.