Ebola and Mental Health, CDC Response to Ebola in West Africa in 2014-2015: Weds 15 July

Dear Peter, we are thrilled to invite you to our upcoming Webinar: 

Ebola and Mental Health, CDC Response to Ebola in West Africa in 2014-2015 on Wednesday, 15 July at 13:00-14:00 (CEST) 

Register here 

What can the Ebola response in West Africa teach us about mental health, trust, and outbreak preparedness today? We warmly invite you to our upcoming webinar “Ebola and Mental Health: Lessons from the CDC Response in West Africa, 2014–2015” on July 15, 13:00–14:00 CEST. 

Drawing on the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and its rapid escalation, this webinar will explore why mental health and psychosocial support must be considered an essential part of outbreak response. The session will connect past lessons to current challenges, including the ongoing Ebola outbreak caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Anna Grigoryan as our keynote speaker. Based on her personal experience and deployment to Sierra Leone in 2015 as part of the CDC Ebola Response Mission, Dr. Grigoryan will share reflections on key response activities, communication challenges, and the intersection of Ebola response and mental health. The webinar will highlight why coordinated, international, and rapidly scaled-up responses are essential to reduce illness, deaths, fear, and psychosocial distress during outbreaks. 

Agenda 
13:00–13:30 Keynote by Dr. Anna Grigoryan 
13:30–13:50 Q&A session 
13:50–14:00 Wrap-up 

About the speaker 

Dr. Anna Grigoryan is a physician–scientist with over 20 years of international experience leading complex public health projects, fostering innovation, and building strategic partnerships. She spearheaded the WHO–CDC Collaborating Center for Global Public Health Informatics, serving as its first Program Manager. During her tenure at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), she contributed directly to emergency responses to major crises, including the Haiti and China earthquakes, the avian influenza outbreak, and the Fukushima nuclear accident.

In 2015, Dr. Grigoryan supported the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health during the Ebola epidemic as part of the CDC Ebola Response Mission. In her more recent role at the UN/IAEA, she managed a portfolio of projects focused on laboratory strengthening, cancer control, and emergency preparedness, supporting Member States across Africa. She has also mentored emerging leaders and promoted cultures of accountability and inclusion during periods of organizational transition.This webinar is intended for public health and mental health professionals, as well as everyone interested in Ebola response, outbreak control, pandemic preparedness, and mental health and psychosocial support.

Please note: The webinar will be recorded. If you do not wish to appear in the recording, you are welcome to keep your camera turned off.

We look forward to your participation and to an engaging discussion on the role of mental health in outbreak response.

Please register even if you cannot attend and we will let you know when the video of the webinar is available. 

For any questions, feel free to contact the Hub Management Team at info AT globalhealthhub.de. 

Warm regards,
Katrin 
------
Katrin Würfel, Global Health Hub Germany

Previously: 'ebola' : 'Africa' : 'epidemic'

'Moved to Care' amid the Boxes - RCN

A Balikbayan Box for Nursing: artists and writers in residence

'Our new Arts Council National Lottery funded project takes the Filipino custom of the Balikbayan Box as its central theme, inspired by Romalyn Ante's poem Notes Inside a Balikbayan Box. The Balikbayan Box is a long-standing Filipino cultural practice through which we are exploring the spirit of nursing across borders and boundaries. 

Visit our exhibition to explore the installation ‘Inside Home’ by Haleema Aziz and meet our writers in residence – Romalyn Ante, Jennifer Wong and Christie Watson – to explore the art of nursing with a difference.

Our writers will each be running a writing workshop for a different audience to help them engage with the exhibition themes, and develop their own writing skills: refugees, schoolchildren and young adults.

Writing residencies run in the RCN Library and Museum (20 Cavendish Square) from April – June 2026. Find our what our writers have been working on at this public celebration of art and migration panel event in July.

Our writers will be based in the Moved to Care exhibition space in the England Library from 11am-4pm during their residency week. Anybody can drop in and chat to them between 3-4pm, or if you're a member you can book a free half-hour 121 slot. Discuss your own writing, ask questions about publication or the role of art and creativity in nursing with our writers in residence.'

Previously: 'box' : 'creativity' 

My source RCN Congress 2026

A time for reflection S-N solstice :: equinox

Analemma image: Anthony Ayiomamitis

Ever since we first took note of the passing Seasons, and what is left of them today, we have marvelled and come to recognise the extremes of the calendar in the sky.

For humanity in the North and the South. 

The emergence of culture, societies, and civilization has been  dependent upon the calendar - whether recorded in customs and rites, giant blocks of stone, papyrus, or binary code.

As the solstice fast approaches - Sunday, 21 December 2025 15:03-4 - and the Sun touches its lowest, southernmost point, I think of (former) family and friends 'way down' south, and the distance between the hemispheres, represented in the analemma. Of course then there is the solstitial experience of humanity in the south as the sun crests the highest point in their sky.

It must be amazing to see the nightsky from the far south(?). 

How might we explain this culturally, with the benefit of foresight? This apparent celestial 'opposition' of Earth's path around the Sun, is reflected N-S in who bears the impact of climate change and the need attend to planetary health.

But, then look at the equinox, the north and south are seemingly united? 

Is there a baton passed in March and September?

Perhaps, this can be a celebration of global health, for both hemispheres. With a simultaneous 'nod' to planetary health and the search for social and climate justice.
 

What Complex Threads We Weave

health - Human - LIFE: Career

As highlighted previously, the full title of Hodges' model was originally The Health Career Model.

Reference to 'career' in there, caused many visitors to the first website, and presumably readers of Brian's book chapter:

Hodges, B.E. (1989) The Health Career Model, IN, Hinchcliffe, S.M. (et al.) 1989 Nursing Practice and Health Care, 1st Edition only, London, Edward Arnold.

- to assume the model concerned professional careers, jobs, and employment.

For this reason after some discussion 'care domains' was added:

Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model

A bit ungainly, but it is important that 'health career' was retained. After 5-10 years since first encountering and applying the model in a case study (1987-88), a key appeal of the model for me was its seeming increase in relevance. This may be a function of familiarity, preoccupation, (growing) obsession but the book below by Goldschmidt is confirmation for me.

Goldschmidt describes the 'Career and the Life Cycle' identifying several stages:

• Infantile preadaptation
• Training
• Career launching
• Career establishment
• Career maintenance (pp.113-114).

The first, infantile preadaptation appears associate strongly with the idea of life chances. 

Goldschmidt begins: 

"Career is a lifetime process. The word process here is important. If the English language did not render it too awkward, it would be preferable to make a verb out of it: careering. The major phases in the process relate to the physiological changes as the individual moves from infancy toward his ultimate death." p.113.

"The pursuit of career is not merely a social phenomenon in the sense that the values and purposes are socially derived and hence attainment is reflexive of community attitudes, but because career performance always involves two highly social orientations: collaboration and identification. It is a social performance. No person achieves satisfaction going it alone; he must collaborate with diverse others, usually socially structured groups - family or household, clan, age-mates, work associates, or whatever." p.117.

We need to understand that life chances are often determined before life.

   Individual - Self         

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES                   

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

   Dyad - Group - Culture - Population 

Identity Work, roles, activity  for all.	"The activities of the motivated individual can be conceptualized as his or her career. By career I mean that trajectory through life which each person undergoes, the activities he or she engages in to satisfy physical needs and wants and the even more important social needs and wants. The career, then, is activated in the service of both the physical being and the symbolic self."p.107.
The HUMAN CAREER	Policy Politics The health career and human career of future generations and all life. Artificial Intelligence - Future 'careers'?

Today, the health career entails consideration of the life cycle of all life as we not only contemplate planetary health, but seek to assure the biosphere.

Goldschmidt, W. (1990). The human career: The self in the symbolic world. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Book cover: https://biblio.co.nz/walter-goldschmidt/author/99497

History: Hepatoscopy and the Census

INDIVIDUAL

|

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

"Perhaps it was merely an oversight of this historian that he failed to mention another religious practice, hepatoscopy. For this, the Romans down to imperial times relied on Etruscans. Divination from the liver of sacrificed animals was a most complicated business.

To get the interpretation right required a sound knowledge not only of astronomy but also of anatomy and pathology. In 1877 at Piacenza a bronze model of a liver was found. It was evidently a model used in a priests' school for teaching the art of haruspicy, and of a fairly late period. On the upper surface are marked sixteen divisions in which are inscribed the names of some thirty gods, some more than once. Each of the sixteen divisions corresponded to a section of the heavens, for the Etruscans regarded the liver as an image of the cosmos, as a microcosm of the universe. The liver, it was believed, exactly reproduced the heavenly firmament with its sacred laws and controlling divinities and its division, first into four, by the intersecting axes and then into sixteen subdivisions." p.87.

The Etruscans

"Censuses for purposes of taxation and military service still exist. But not many know that it was an Etruscan king who first legally established such a registration in Rome, from whence, with the rise of the Roman empire, it spread throughout Europe."  "What this measure was is stated by Livy thus: 'The population was divided into classes and 'centuries' according to a scale based on the census, and suitable for both peace and war." p.146.

Keller, W. (1975) The Etruscans. Norfolk: Book Club Associates. [Cover image: AbeBooks]