Our Highlights
Global Happenings
In 2025, more than 171 million students worldwide experienced disruptions to their education due to climate-related hazards. Floods, heatwaves, storms, and other extreme weather events affected school attendance and learning. UNICEF highlights the need for climate-resilient education systems, safer schools, and measures to protect children’s right to continuous education.
WHO is expanding access to quality-assured, child-friendly cancer medicines to improve treatment for children with cancer. The initiative supports reliable availability of appropriate medicines, helping health systems provide safer, effective and affordable care. Improved access aims to reduce treatment gaps and strengthen outcomes for children affected by cancer worldwide.
Haiti is facing a severe child nutrition crisis, with nearly one in thirteen children under five suffering from acute malnutrition. The situation is driven by food insecurity, poverty, displacement and limited access to healthcare. Urgent nutrition support, including screening, treatment and access to nutritious food, is essential to prevent further deterioration.
Social Stream
AI for Climate Change and Public Health Risk Prediction
Climate change is increasingly becoming a public health challenge. Heatwaves, extreme weather, air pollution, and changing rainfall patterns can affect infectious diseases, respiratory health, cardiovascular conditions, and mental wellbeing.
AI can help connect climate, environmental, population, and health data to identify patterns and predict health risks. These insights could give health systems more time to prepare, strengthen early warning systems, and protect communities most at risk.
But prediction alone is not enough. Data quality, bias, privacy, infrastructure, and the ability to translate predictions into local action remain critical challenges. Responsible AI must complement not replace public health expertise and human decision-making.
This discussion is open on COPHI (Community of Population Health Informatics), a discussion forum anchored in the SMAART framework and envisioned by Dr. @ashish_joshi_phd,MBBS,MPH
Share your views on:
1. How can AI strengthen climate-related health risk prediction?
2. How can AI-generated warnings be translated into timely public health action?
3. What challenges must be addressed to make these systems reliable and equitable, especially in resource-limited settings?
Share your experiences, perspectives, and evidence-informed ideas.
Join the discussion: https: https://smaartlab.org/discussion-board/public-health-interventions-ai-in-public-health/ai-for-climate-change-and-public-health-risk-prediction/
#AIinPublicHealth #ClimateHealth #ClimateChange #PublicHealth #COPHI #PopulationHealth #SMAART #HealthTech #ClimateResilience #EarlyWarningSystems
Sep 22
This Week on SHINE: Global Nutrition & Health Updates 🌍
This week, the @who announced a major step toward improving access to quality-assured, child-friendly cancer medicines, with a new call for manufacturers to submit priority childhood cancer medicines for evaluation.
With an estimated 400,000 children and adolescents developing cancer every year, and nearly 90% living in low- and middle-income countries, improving access to appropriate medicines remains a critical global health priority.
This is the kind of global health development SHINE brings together.
Launched in 2021, SHINE is a global platform for Nutrition Informatics, connecting nutrition, information, and technology to support evidence-based practice, research, programs, and policies.
📌 Every week, SHINE brings you:
- Global health & nutrition happenings
- Emerging evidence and research
- Policy & practice updates
- Innovations and success stories
Stay informed. Stay connected. Stay ahead with SHINE.
Visit our website to know more: //nutritioninformatics.info/
#SHINE #NutritionInformatics #GlobalNutrition #PublicHealth
Sep 17
AI-Driven Disease Surveillance & Early Outbreak Detection
Disease outbreaks often begin with scattered warning signs across hospitals, laboratories, news, social media, environmental data, and more. AI can help connect these signals, using machine learning and natural language processing to identify unusual patterns and strengthen early warning systems.
Initiatives such as WHO’s Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) demonstrate how technology can support near-real-time monitoring of public health threats.
AI can combine epidemiological data, web reports, climate patterns, wastewater surveillance, and mobility data to strengthen outbreak detection. But AI is not a replacement for epidemiologists- it is a partner. Data quality, reporting gaps, algorithmic bias, infrastructure limitations, and privacy concerns make human verification essential before AI-generated signals inform action.
This discussion is open on COPHI (Community of Population Health Informatics), a discussion forum anchored in the SMAART framework and envisioned by @ashish_joshi_phd.
Share your views:
1. How can AI be integrated into disease surveillance without compromising accuracy or trust?
2. What role should human oversight play in verifying AI-generated outbreak signals?
3. What challenges- data quality, bias, infrastructure, or others- must be addressed, especially in resource-limited settings?
Share your experiences, perspectives, and evidence-informed ideas on strengthening outbreak preparedness through responsible AI use.
Join the discussion now: https://smaartlab.org/discussion-board/public-health-interventions-ai-in-public-health/ai-driven-disease-surveillance-and-early-outbreak-detection/
#AIinPublicHealth #DiseaseSurveillance #OutbreakDetection #PublicHealth #COPHI #PopulationHealth #SMAART #HealthTech #EpidemicIntelligence #healthawareness
www.fhts.ac.in , www.smaartlab.org
call us on +91-8527897771 or write to us contact@fhts.ac.in
Sep 17
Foundation of Healthcare Technologies Society (FHTS), University of Memphis School of Public Health, and Zilla Parishad, Kolhapur, Maharashtra, under a joint collaborative initiative, are bringing the Model of Public Health Education to High Schools by using the Public Health in Action curriculum and establishing public health clubs across 50 high schools in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. This first-of-its-kind initiative is engaging more than 1,500 students as public health ambassadors across all 12 blocks of Kolhapur.
Building on the previous modules, the fifth curriculum session, focused on the role of data, information, and knowledge in public health, was delivered across 41 schools in Kolhapur. The session was conducted by Dr. Rashmi Nirhale, Public Health Outreach Specialist at FHTS, entirely in Marathi, helping students understand how data moves from raw numbers to meaningful information and, ultimately, actionable knowledge in public health decision-making.
The initiative furthers the goals of the National Education Policy 2020 and reflects how public health in action can support the Maharashtra state government`s `My Village Healthy Village` initiative, working to address adolescent health challenges such as unhealthy eating, environmental pollution, physical inactivity, emotional well-being, mental health, and social media and mobile addiction.
#PublicHealth #PublicHealthInAction #FHTS #Kolhapur #Maharashtra
#NEP2020 #MyVillageHealthyVillage #YouthLeadership #PublicHealthEducation #NationBuilding #CommunityHealth
Sep 14
