ASTMH 64th Annual Meeting: #IAmTropMed

What do an Ebola treatment unit, the history of malaria in art, and malaria elimination all have in common? These were just some of the sessions available to participants of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) 64^th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

From October 25-29, 2015, three members of The DHS Program analysis group attended the conference to learn more about the new and innovative ideas emerging in the field of tropical medicine. Some topics of interest include data collection strategies for monitoring and evaluating seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), as well as improvements in malaria diagnostic tools.

While at the conference, three posters were presented by The DHS Program staff:

• Increasing equity of insecticide-treated net ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa from 2003 to 2014
• Impact of the scale-up of malaria control interventions in Mali 2001-2012
• Trends in care seeking for children’s recent fever in Liberia: Evidence of impact of the Malaria Communities Program (MCP)

These three posters were only a fraction of the posters that used or cited DHS data. Many presentations cited DHS data in their background sections and used DHS data in their analysis. Conference attendees also included past DHS workshop participants who continue to use DHS data for their jobs.

In his opening address to the conference, former administrator for USAID Dr. Rajiv Shah commented, “so many of you are drawn to this conference because of your passion to protect those who are vulnerable…to eradicate diseases you know disproportionately affect the poorest communities in the world.” Indeed, the shared passion was tangible and energizing for The DHS Program staff.

If you are interested in tropical medicine, be sure to check out recent DHS analytical reports that use malaria data:

• The Relationship between the Health Service Environment and Service Utilization: Linking Population Data to Health Facilities Data in Haiti and Malawi (English)
• Measures of Malaria Parasitemia Prevalence in National Surveys: Agreement between Rapid Diagnostic Tests and Microscopy (English) 
• Preventing Malaria during Pregnancy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Determinants of Effective IPTp Delivery (English)
• Improving Estimates of Insecticide-Treated Mosquito Net Coverage from Household Surveys: Using Geographic Coordinates to Account for Endemicity and Seasonality (English)
• Malaria Prevention and Treatment for Children Under Five in Mali: Further Analysis of the 2012-13 Demographic and Health Survey (English, French)