World Health Day on April 7, 2008, saw the launch of the Lancet Global Health Network. The network will search and archive evidence, commission new studies and campaign for action in critical areas of international health and development, focusing particularly on low and middle-income countries. It is just one of a range of important development programmes with which we are involved.
Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet, describes the Global Health Network as a “virtual policy institute in global health, drawing together the best scientists to work on neglected but vitally important aspects of human health.”
The work from this new think tank will inform the work of the Lancet and result in a series of important policy reports to help decision makers in global institutions and in countries.
Planned reports in 2008 include maternal and child under-nutrition, HIV prevention and Primary Health Care as well as a series of country reports on China, India and Pakistan.
Reed Elsevier already works on a number of important international development programmes.
Elsevier is one of a number of publishing companies providing health workers and researchers in over 100 developing countries with free or low cost access to information through the UN’s Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI).
Similarly, Elsevier provides over half of the journals on the UN’s Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) and is a founding partner in the Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), a joint programme between the UN Environment Programme, Yale and Cornell Universities and other publishers. OARE already provides information in 70 low income countries and a further 37 will join the project in 2008.