Home ILDS Logo
You are here: Home | News & Events | News | A Year in Review: …
Back to previous page

A Year in Review: Insights from the first ILDS Intern

In 2023, the International League of Dermatological Societies established an internship for trainees interested in global health dermatology to spend a year actively participating in the ILDS’s high-level processes involved in building strong global dermatology initiatives.

Jadesola Akinwuntan_ILDS Intern 2

Jadesola Akinwuntan, BS

During her internship, Jadesola was affiliated to the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Dermatology and University of Kansas School of Medicine. She received funding through the American Academy of Dermatology and Society of Investigative Dermatology Gap Year Fellowship and the ILDS.

Jadesola Akinwuntan shares her experience:

My year as the inaugural ILDS’ intern focused on providing logistical and administrative support to the WHO’s Neglected Tropical Diseases Department. Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affect roughly 1.62 billion people globally and are particularly prevalent in people living low-resource settings of tropical and subtropical regions [1]. Of the twenty-one recognized NTDs, 16 have cutaneous manifestations and are called the “skin NTDs” [2,3]. I supported the WHO’s NTD department in two main areas: OpenWHO and the working groups to end skin-NTDs by 2030.

OpenWHO is a free open-access platform developed in 2017 to provide globally-accessible educational resources for frontline responders, health workers, policymakers and anyone interested in learning about public health. My role in this project centered around developing, editing, and uploading the Superficial Fungal Infections, Skin and Migration, and Sporotrichosis courses. OpenWHO has had a significant impact on public health education, with over 8 million enrollees to all their courses. The courses that I helped to develop and manage have already received over 7,000 enrollments.

OpenWHO

Find out more about the OpenWHO courses on their website by clicking the button below.

Find out more

Following the WHO’s first-ever Global Meeting on Skin NTDs in Geneva in March 2023, several informal working groups were formed to move forward the initiatives presented in the WHO’s Strategic Framework to end skin NTDs by 20303. My second role as the ILDS-WHO intern was to provide technical support for the Capacity-Strengthening and Training Working Group, whose aim is to “advance integrated capacity building through development and maintenance of high-quality training materials on the diagnosis, treatment, and management of Neglected Tropical diseases”. We developed a Continuum of Care database that details the journey a patient with NTDs must go through to seek out care as well as the role of health care providers and the delays faced by the patients along this journey.

My intern year concluded with a week-long posting to the WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland during the 77th World Health Assembly to attend the ILDS’s World Health Assembly Side Meeting on Skin Diseases as a Global Public Health Priority. I met key players in global health dermatology, including the Minister of Health of Panama who has championed initiatives to promote effective psoriasis care in Panama.

WHA Side Meeting

Explore the report of the WHA Side Meeting, organised by ILDS and GlobalSkin

Find out more

The health policy experiences I have gained through this program have emphasized to me the tangible global impact that appropriately supervised young trainees can have. I hope that equipping younger generations with the skills and networks necessary to become future leaders and advocates in the field of global health dermatology will continue as a priority investment for established organization like the ILDS and WHO.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Esther Freeman and Dr. Claire Fuller for mentoring me through this year. I would like to Dr. Henry Lim, Arpita Bhose, Emma van Rooijen, Homa Chuku and the ILDS Board Members as well as Dr. José-Ruiz Postigo, Dr. Kingsley Asiedu, Dr. Priya Pathak, Adeola Bamisaiye, and the WHO NTD Department for their continued support throughout the year.

Dr Esther Freeman and Jadesola Akinwuntan, BS at the AAD Annual Meeting 2024

References

  1. World Health Organization, Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases. Global report on neglected tropical diseases 2024. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2024
  2. World Health Organization. WHO officially recognizes noma as a neglected tropical disease [Internet]. WHO; 2023 [cited 2024 May 24]. Available from https://www.who.int/news/item/15-12-2023-who-officially-recognizes-noma-as-a-neglected-tropical-disease
  3. World Health Organization, Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases. Ending the neglect to attain the sustainable development goals: a strategic framework for integrated control and management of skin-related neglected tropical diseases. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization: 2022