My friend is trying to raise money for a competition. Sounds like a great person. Please vote. You don't have to be Waterloo to vote, although it would be amazing if you did.
Dear Student body, Staff, and fellow alumni of the University of Waterloo, it’s a pleasure to be writing home.
Waterloo is a second home for me because I moved here for University in 2006. I graduated with Honours Science and a minor in psychology from the University of Waterloo in 2009. My time at Waterloo was one of immense changes and personal growth. You could say I spent my formative years in Waterloo as I was in Waterloo between the ages of 14 and 18 for University.
My time at Waterloo afforded me the luxury of a safe space to define and redefine myself which I took advantage of. It was also a positive reinforcement for my naturally curious personality. I am more confident, intellectually responsible and empathetic for my time at the University of Waterloo.
Since my graduation, I have completed a Masters in Global Health at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, an internship with the World Health Organisation in Japan, and am currently working in population health research. My degree from the University of Waterloo has definitely opened many doors for me. Everywhere I go I am proud to say I graduated from the home of the Blackberry. All the way in Japan, my purple ‘University of Waterloo’ crested water-bottle sparked some interesting conversation as I was proud to learn that Waterloo is a pace setter in global health- being a smoke-free city.
I am writing home today to ask you to join me to make a dream a reality by sparing just a minute of your time. Essentially, as I engaged in intellectual discourse during my Masters programme in and got more experience in global health through doing some research with the World Health Organisation,it became very apparent that although non-communicable diseases are easily preventable, they are not being accorded the necessary urgency to see to their prevention. 80% of the global burden of non-communicable diseases is found in low and middle income countries with the Sub-Saharan African region projected to have the highest regional increase in morbidity and mortality from these diseases by 2020.
Non-communicable diseases are such diseases as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes, strokes, hypertension among others. They share common risk factors such as indiscriminate consumption of alcohol, smoking, poor diet, and inadequate exercise and as such they are easily prevented through comprehensive and integrated action on the known risk factors. Unlike in developed countries, in Sub-Saharan Africa people don't generally die of these diseases when they are old, rather they die of them when they are young, still have dependants, and are still full of promise and have meaningful contributions to make to society. Thus they and their loved ones are pushed further into poverty and socio-economic underdevelopment due to catastrophic healthcare costs from these chronic diseases. Chronic diseases are also a huge burden on the already fragile health systems of these countries and are masking the giant strides that have been made in improving health on the continent in recent years.
Engage Africa Foundation was founded in response to the growing burden of chronic diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. At Engage Africa Foundation we want to address this issue, and most importantly in a sustainable manner that will actually have an impact in the long term.
We are currently applying for a grant called 'Canada's rising stars in global health'. For this grant, we need as many people as possible to give our video application a thumbs up. The more thumbs ups we get, the more likely we are to get the grant.
We hope you can kindly take some time to view the video and vote on our idea.
Here is the link: http://doiop.com/ebele
As soon as we get the grant, Engage Africa Foundation plans to address this problem through a broad strategy which involves research, monitoring and surveillance; health promotion and knowledge transfer; interdisciplinary partnerships with academic institutions, media and labour organizations for sustainable health promotion on this issue; and policy advocacy in conjunction with the regional WHO office to advocate for comprehensive policies on chronic disease at the level of the health system and government.
Our foremost priority at the moment is having a clear picture of the prevalent chronic diseases and their risk factors in the region and this will be done through a pilot surveillance project making use of the STEPS surveillance and monitoring instrument of the World Health Organisation. This will involve the administration of a cross sectional survey and physical and biochemical measurements on a representative sample of the population. We are going to use the evidence from this research as tool for policy advocacy and to plan context specific health promotion campaigns.
However, we are not just aiming for a top-down approach. We believe that ownership is crucial for sustainability and as such we are going to be working with all sectors of society in executing health promotion campaigns that will raise awareness on the risk of chronic disease and preventive measures to take and lifestyle changes to adopt. We will work with academic institutions to have peer educators in schools, universities and colleges. We will work with the media in developing highly entertaining but also highly educative campaigns in print, television and radio to this effect. We will work with labour organizations and employers of labour to increasingly adopt workplace health measures that reduce chronic disease risk factors.
We appreciate all the help and support we can get from everybody. We plan on making this a social movement and encourage students to join the movement, by forming groups, talking about the subject of non communicable diseases, and how these can be addressed. 3 out of four of the board members- Ebele Mogo, Ruth Namanya and Tomiwa Adaramola are alumni of the University of Waterloo as so if our alma mater would catch this vision it would be a dream come true.
Please feel free to check out website which should be fully active in a few weeks - http://www.engageafricafoundation.org/ , as well as our facebook page: www.facebook.com/engageafricafoundation. Most importantly, please take the time out to view AND VOTE for our video on Canada’s rising stars in Global health so we can get this grant and commence on this project.
You can vote, by logging in, creating an account and giving our video a thumbsup: http://doiop.com/ebele
We need as many people as possible, so please pass the link along to – your friends, acquaintances, classmates and loved ones to vote for our video application to make this happen.
If you have more questions, please email us at info@engageafricafoundation.org
With much hope and determination,
