Emily Cotter was a Student Ambassador for the Global Network in 2009. She has blogged for us in the past, and today she reflects on her experience advocating for NTDs.

In November 2009, the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases launched their inaugural Campus Challenge, a contest challenging students to become leaders in the fight to prevent, control and eliminate the world’s most common NTDs.  I had just returned from Sierra Leone a few months prior, having worked with Helen Keller International (HKI) on their NTD surveillance and control programs.  Inspired by the work I had done with HKI, I became a Student Ambassador for the Global Network in order to indulge my passion for advocacy and treatment of NTDs by recruiting other interested students at the George Washington University School of Medicine and leading one of these Campus Challenge efforts.

I knew that many of my fellow medical students were similarly interested in NTDs after recently learning about them from Dr. Peter Hotez during our Microbiology course.  A small group of us initially met to brainstorm ideas for the Campus Challenge – activities such as bake-sales, “wormy-grams” for Valentine’s Day, fundraising happy hours, and announcements and coin collections during classes.  We also organized alunchtime lecture given by Dr. Peter Hotez; this event educated the greater GW community about NTDs, the Campus Challenge, and ways to get involved with the campaign. At each of our events we mobilized a grassroots NTD army by advertising ways for interested students to get involved and join our campaign at GW.  In the end, I had more than 20 students on my email list for the campus challenge!

Through this campaign, I learned that people were incredibly interested to learn about NTDs and amazed by the rapid impact package that could treat one person for seven NTDs for one year– for only $0.50! Many friends and family members who did not live in DC and were unable to attend local events still donated to the campaign and expressed support for our efforts.  I was overwhelmed by the generosity of all who contributed to our campaign, especially those who donated small sums of money with the excitement that the cumulative effect of $0.50 donations could improve health at a large community level.

In the end, our GW School of Medicine efforts raised more than $3,900.  Combined with the other 20 individual and group campaigns, student activists raised more than $12,000 for the Global Network.  Actress and Global Network Ambassador Alyssa Milano and the University of Notre Dame matched certain donations, leading to a fundraising total of more than $40,000.  This money was donated to UND’s NTD program activities in Haiti, which had been devastated by an earthquake earlier that year.  I recently learned that the mass drug administration (MDA = community-wide NTD treatments) program resumed just three months after the earthquake.  An MDA campaign was held in Port au Prince in July 2010, treating more than 150,000 people for lymphatic filariasis and soil-transmitted helminths.  Our donation was crucial to this campaign, supporting social mobilization activities and high participation rates in the treatment program.  That’s what I call success.

I now reflect on this campaign a year after it ended.   I remember that NTDs are genuine public health issues for more than 1.4 billion people around the world.  Many people in the United States will never know the word “schistosomiasis.”  Some may have heard of hookworm but joke that it’s only something to worry about if you don’t wear shoes.  However, for many people in this world these diseases are incredibly real – they are debilitating, disfiguring, and lead to decreased productivity in society.  They can cause blood loss which coupled with parasites such as malaria can lead to such profound anemia that children can die – a tragedy I witnessed while working at a clinic in southern Sierra Leone.  It’s easy to forget about these problems when we have access to clean water, sanitation, and medical care in the United States, yet it is essential to hold space in our minds and hearts that the rest of the world is not nearly as lucky as we and deal with these public health problems on a daily basis.  Above all this, however, is the reflection that a small grassroots effort of committed individuals can speak for those without voices; educate our families, friends and communities about issues for which we are passionate; inspire our peers to get involved; and effect great change along the way.