Clinton School visiting scholar Arvind Singal has been invited to serve on a board to implement a three-year strategic plan for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to eradicate wild poliovirus.
GPEI is a global health program sponsored by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF.
Singhal has agreed to serve on an independent advisory board, which will monitor the efforts of GPEI to implement its new plan.
The effort to eradicate polio, which is still present in parts of Africa, is at a critical juncture according to a news release from GPRI:
Across Africa, 10 of the 15 previously polio-free countries re-infected in 2009 have successfully stopped their outbreaks. Key endemic countries are witnessing historic gains against the disease. Nowhere is progress more evident than Nigeria, where case numbers have plummeted by more than 99% – from 312 cases at this time last year, to three in 2010. In India, for the first time ever, the remaining endemic states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have not reported any wild poliovirus type 1 cases concurrently for more than six months.
Singhal is an endowed professor of communication and director of research and outreach for the Sam Donaldson Center for Communication Studies at the University of Texas–El Paso. As a visiting scholar at the Clinton School, Singhal is teaching Dynamics of Social Change, a required course dealing with the elements of social change in a democratic society.
Singhal has coauthored or edited 10 books and monographs, including his latest, “Protecting Children from Exploitation and Trafficking: Using the Positive Deviance Approach,” which discusses a method of creating social change from within a society.
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