2:20AM

Goodnight, and Happy Thanksgiving!

- Kate

The Harvard Summit for Young Leaders in China (HSYLC) brings together 40 undergrads from Harvard and 300 Chinese high school students for a nine-day conference held at the end of August. Harvard undergrads teach seminars, on topics ranging from international cuisine to law to economics, that are attended by the chinese students.

I was lucky to be a part of HSYLC a couple summers ago, and was the logistics chair.

One of the best things about it was the sense of community we fostered within the jam-packed 9 days. One surprise event was our giant HSYLC mural produced by the 300 students in attendance.

At first, we told the students that it was a competition to see who could make the most/best drawings on pieces of paper. We then led them into the gym, where they assembled the product face down in groups. At the end of the whole process, each group flipped over their section of the mural and we pieced it together. It was a touching lesson in teamwork.

It reminds me of what all the Team HBV chapters are doing - reaching out all over the world to our best capacity.

I'm a huge fan of using photos to tell a story. I just came across a few of these from a blog (http://hbversinchina.blogspot.com) on hepatitis B in china of our friend Lei Chuang!

Their faces are whited out. This says something more than the photo itself.

Lei really knows how to make a statement with Performance Art.

Some breaking news in the realm of chronic hep B treatment:

Yesterday, Gilead and GlaxoSmithKline signed an agreement to commercialize chronic hep B treatment Viread in Asia.

I pasted a blog about this from http://www.mysmartrend.com/nw/15683

Gilead Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline announced a licensing agreement to commercialize Viread. Viread is for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B infection in adults in five countries in Asia. Under the terms of the agreement, Gilead will retain exclusive rights for commercialization of Viread in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. GlaxoSmithKline will have exclusive commercialization rights and registration responsibilities for the drug in China. Both companies will pay royalties to the other on sales of Viread. Gilead Chairman and CEO John C. Martin said, "Chronic hepatitis B infection is a significant global health problem and the need for new effective treatment options is particularly urgent in Asia, where approximately 280 million people are living with this serious, life-threatening disease. Through this agreement, Gilead is proud to ensure broader access to Viread for chronic hepatitis B in some of the world's highest prevalence regions." 

Hello!

Blogging from lab, while my rat works hard in his cage on this desk.

Team HBV board meeting ended so late last night... We started inputting survey data around 10, finished around 11:30, and then started talking about the Collegiate Conference, meeting with Dr Lau, meeting with Dr. Chung, things to do next year...

Our conclusion: we need another board meeting soon. heh, see you guys all next weekend!

Check out my pictures! We took a picture of every board member holding a survey, lol! I didn't have my camera, so we took these with photobooth on my mac.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

xoxo,

Kate

A little down time during board meeting right now...

We're currently going through and tabulating results from our pre and post surveys. Francis has made an excellent spreadsheet (modeled after the ALC's survey analysis spreadsheet, but keeping individual surveys separate at the same time). This is going to make data analysis so much easier than last year...

And now, back to the surveys... We have so many!!!

- Kate

Francis already blogged about this, so check out his blog for more thorough details.

Team HBV's dinner discussion with Dr. Lau and a few Harvard med students turned out to be surprisingly productive!

Originally, I had hoped for Dr. Lau to get to know Team HBV at Harvard better and find out what we're doing to improve hepatitis B awareness. In turn, I hoped that she would offer advice for our club and tell us about her personal experiences with patients.

Without any prompting, Dr. Lau immediately suggested that we begin a monthly screening program. She offered to take a big role in making this happen - it'll be a collaboration between her, Harvard med APAMSA, and Team HBV at Harvard. Collaboration at it's best, no?

Again, see Francis' blog for more details =)

 Next time, I won't be so shy about taking pictures.

Over this weekend, while Frank, Francis, and I were all at the conference, dedicated Team HBV at Harvard members were finishing up educational outreach at Harvard Citizenship classes, handing out postsurveys.

We have really thrown ourselves into this outreach program, and I am so proud of the improvements we've made over last year's work (which is what we presented on at the conference):

- BIG posters! We ordered 18x24 posters from a cheap online source (shortrunposters.com)
- Revised curriculum, including an emphasis differences between hep A, B, C
- higher quality presenters: our educators were required to memorize a "script" - I hesitate to call it this because it is mostly a detailed set of important points that they must cover throughout the presentation
- better presenter training
- better handouts: a better designed presentation summary handout

Our improved quality has really been reflected in the level of audience participation. Having nice posters and well-designed handouts were so crucial to giving us a professional appearance, and attracted their attention right from the start. The increased clarity of the presentation also has helped to foster really great discussions - every week, someone has a story about a stimulating conversation in the classroom.

Great work team! I am so proud.

Now that the first Team HBV conference is over, it's time to get back to Team HBV at Harvard.

I am so excited for our upcoming dinner discussion with hepatologist Dr. Daryl Lau in two days! Daryl Lau is very active in the hepatitis B community - she recently spoke at the Jade Forum, a series of speaker events held by the hepatitis B Initiative in Boston, 3 weeks ago.Team HBV at Harvard then ran into her again one week later at the APAMSA hepatitis B conference, where she came to speak informally to students over lunch. The first time I met her was actually at LIVERight 2 years ago, where she gave a speech on hepatitis B to all the LIVERight attendees just before the event began. She is a woman with a lot of energy and a lot of spunk, and is very enthusiastic to be working with students. 

Our event will be held at a dining hall on campus. A few APAMSA students from Harvard med may come as well, and I'm very excited for a provoking discussion this week! More to come on this later...

As an aside for new chapters of Team HBV: go out and try to talk to professionals about hepatitis B! You may be surprised at how supportive they can be, and it is a great way to promote campus outreach. =)

Over the past 24 hours, I'm so thankful to have met so many fun, dedicated, and motivated students. As much as the chapters' presentations inspired us all today, talking and meeting with everyone outside of the conference has been just as inspirational.

Here's a fun picture that I'd just like to share - I thought I'd blog this because otherwise it'd just get lost in one of my albums. Here we are with the Cornell chapter, getting some freshly baked cookies in the lobby =). Good times.

An issue that came up in several of the talks today was the importance of keeping a good database to pass down to new generations of Team HBV. I just wanted to share the tool that the Harvard chapter uses to share documents - dropbox.

You can download dropbox at www.getdropbox.com.

It's super great for the following reasons:

1. A dropbox folder is created on your computer that automatically syncs online. When you aren't connected to the internet, it behaves like any other folder on your computer would. Once you get reconnected to the internet, the folder automatically syncs online.

2. The folder can be shared with multiple users.

3. Changes to files are tracked over time - you can view older versions of the same file. This is extremely helpful when you want to review changes made to the file.

Every document that Harvard Team HBV has produced is kept on the dropbox, from outreach materials to grant applications to flyers to pictures. This has made board transitioning so much smoother, and ensures that we do not keep redoing work that has already been done. It's great, and I think it's a great resource for everyone to use for their own chapters!

 - Kate