The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: pushing the boundaries of what is possible in public health - perspectives and challenges to the global community

<!--HTML--><b>Introduction</b>: In July 2008, Bill Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role at Microsoft, to spend more time on his philanthropic work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As the world’s largest philanthropic organization, the Gates Foundation has set ambitious goals to tackle some of the world’s worst diseases. In this talk, Julie Jacobson will outline some of the objectives of the Gates Foundation and how it is impacting public health and challenging the global community. <b>Speaker Bio</b>: As Senior Programme Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Julie Jacobson currently supports grants working toward the control of neglected tropical diseases and works with the development and implementation of new vaccines in the infectious disease group of Global Health. Previously Dr. Jacobson was Scientific Director of Immunization Solutions and Director of Japanese encephalitis (JE) project at PATH, an international non-profit organization. As director of the JE project, she managed a US$35 million grant to accelerate the control of JE in endemic countries by improving data on the distribution of JE, accelerating the development of an improved vaccine and diagnostic tests for JE, and helping countries integrate JE vaccine into immunization programs. In her role as scientific director she defined the direction and growth of immunization solutions work by increasing the availability of vaccines to the world’s most vulnerable populations. This ranged from work on clinical trials for specific vaccines to directly working with ministries of health and partners in decision-making on vaccine introduction and planning. Before that, Dr. Jacobson was responsible for prioritizing and designing field activities for PATH’s Children’s Vaccine Project in the areas including yellow fever and rotavirus. Prior to joining PATH, Dr. Jacobson worked at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer. In this capacity, she worked in disaster epidemiology and conducted needs assessments for disaster victims, evaluated national surveillance systems, and evaluated the health impact of earthquakes on displaced persons. Dr. Jacobson is a physician with training in clinical tropical medicine and applied epidemiology.