The ColaLife Virtual Advisory Board
March 11, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
There has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes to put together a ‘virtual advisory board’ of well known names to add further credibility to ColaLife and help us move from an incredibly successful campaign to an organisation that can help put together the unlikely alliances that are going to be required for us to achieve our vision. Getting the first person to commit was always going to be the big challenge. So our sincere thanks go to Don Nutbeam who has put himself forward as our first ‘virtual advisory board’ member.
Don Nutbeam
Professor of Public Health
University of Southampton
Professor Nutbeam said:
“ColaLife offers a creative solution to the distribution problems that prevent the delivery of proven solutions to enduring health problems among some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. For Coca-Cola it represents an outstanding example of corporate social responsibility.”
Professor Nutbeam has been a long term supporter of ColaLife. You will see from this video that he shares the ColaLife philosophy and our attitude to big business. When this was filmed (June 2009), Don was Honourary Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney. He talks about ColaLife in the context of ‘making the most of what is already there’ to improve public health, or ‘going with the grain’. He says:
“I’ve been working . . . with a campaign to try to persuade Coca-Cola who have frankly the best distribution network in Africa to use their distribution network to deliver essential medicines. They can deliver Coca-Cola to pretty much any corner of Africa and we in public health seem to be miserable at achieving the same goal so why not try to work with the grain.”
Brilliant.
Professor Nutbeam’s summary boigraphy reads like this:
DON NUTBEAM PhD FFPH
Don Nutbeam is currently Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton and a Professor of Public Health. His career has spanned positions in universities, government, health services and an independent research institute. From 2003-9 he was in senior academic roles in the University of Sydney, and prior to this he was Head of Public Health in the UK Department of Health. His research interests include public health intervention research in schools and communities as well as studies of health literacy, and adolescent health behaviour. He has published widely on these topics. He has substantial international experience in both developing and developed countries, working as an advisor and consultant for the World Health Organisation over a 20 year period, and as consultant and team leader in projects for the World Bank.
Onwards and upwards.
Reflecting on the Q&A session at Hult International Business School
March 3, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
This video captures our thoughts immediately following the Q&A session with students of Lisa ter Haar (onlyconnectcommunication) at the Hult International Business School in London. David Wilcox (socialreporter.com) is asking the questions of Lisa and I.
David and the students filmed the Q&A which will appear shortly on the ColaLife FAQ page.
Vaccines in AidPods by 2015?
February 20, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
This video is the copyright of Oxford University 2010 and first appeared here on 18 Feb 2010.
This is very exciting. Watch the video to get the full story. Basically, a team at the Jenner Institute have come up with a way to store the active ingredients of a vaccine on a small square membrane which does not need to be stored in a fridge. Traditionally, vaccines need to be refrigerated from the time they are produced to the moment they are injected. This causes huge logistical problems as the whole of the distribution system needs to be kept cold. In practice this means that thousands and thousands of children do not get the vaccines they need.
At the moment the ColaLife idea can do nothing to address this problem because the AidPods would be exposed to the elements and could get very hot. So AidPods could not be used to distribute traditional vaccines. But they could be used to distribute these new ‘heat-stable vaccines’. In the video Dr Matt Jennings claims that vaccines produced in this way are stable for 6 months at temperatures of 45°C which is incredible.
‘Currently vaccines need to be stored in a fridge or freezer,’ explains lead author Dr Matt Cottingham of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford. ‘That means you need a clinic with a nurse, a fridge and an electricity supply, and refrigeration lorries for distribution.
‘If you could ship vaccines at normal temperatures, you would greatly reduce cost and hugely improve access to vaccines,’ he says. ‘You could even picture someone with a backpack taking vaccine doses on a bike into remote villages.’
‘We’ve shown that a very simple way of heat-stabilising vaccines works for two viruses that are being used as the basis for novel vaccines in development,’ says principal investigator Professor Adrian Hill of Oxford University. ‘This is so exciting scientifically because these viruses are fragile. If we are able to stabilise these, other vaccines are likely to be easier.’
They are now looking to put a commercial strategy in place for the development of the technology.
ColaLife presentation at TEDx London - Part 1 and Part 2
January 27, 2010 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
OK, I obviously need to polish my presentation techniques but for those who couldn’t be there, here is the presentation of the ColaLife story at the inaugural TEDx London event on 4 November 2009. Any comments?
Public Health Guru, Prof Don Nutbeam, on ColaLife
December 9, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
First it was David Berman author of Do Good Design talking about ColaLife in a Peachpit TV interview and then I was sent a link to the above video interview featuring Professor Don Nutbeam. When this was filmed (June 2009), Don was Honourary Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney who also talks about ColaLife in the context of ‘making the most of what is already there’ to improve public health, or ‘going with the grain’. He says:
I’ve been working . . . with a campaign to try to persuade Coca-Cola who have frankly the best distribution network in Africa to use their distribution network to deliver essential medicines. They can deliver Coca-Cola to pretty much any corner of Africa and we in public health seem to be miserable at achieving the same goal so why not try to work with the grain.
Brilliant. Don is now Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton (=accessible!).
The top 4 ColaLife videos - enjoy!
November 25, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Note that the first minute of the fourth video is in Swahili. If you don’t speak Swahili, hang around because the rest is in English and is very interesting.
ColaLife makes it into the Skype Video Library
November 21, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
I was prompted to download the latest version of Skype this evening and was very excited to find that as well as a photo you can add a profile video! But then was disappointed that you can’t select your own video, you have to choose one from a (slightly dubious) library. I was about to give up but before I did I thought I’d do a search for ColaLife and this David Berman video popped up as an option! ColaLife gets a great mention in this video which I featured in a previous post. So. Upgrade your Skype and choose this video for your profile!
A conversation with Julian Dobson
November 17, 2009 by Simon Berry · 1 Comment
I first met Julian when New Start Magazine was a twinkle in the eye around 10 years ago. Julian co-founded New Start Magazine with Kath Acres and Jamie Veitch. Kath was one of the first people I turned to when setting up the board of ruralnet|uk and she served as a trustee.
So it was great to meet up with Julian at Chain Reaction last week (12/11/09) and have this ColaLife conversation:
Below is an explanation of the AidPod mentioned in the interview.
10,000 have viewed ColaLife Animation
November 16, 2009 by Simon Berry · Leave a Comment
Over the weekend the original ColaLife animation went through the 10,000 views barrier - that’s around 25 views a day since it was published. You can watch it on the *NEW* ColaLife Channel (it’s only got a few views here so far). Thanks go to Luke Berry (artist), Sam Berry (animator) and Julian (sound effects) of Georgia Wonder who put this together in 3 days back in October 2008 for the Google 10 to the 100th Project.
The ColaLife Channel launches
November 14, 2009 by Simon Berry · 2 Comments
A key element of the online part of the ColaLife campaign has been to take a multi-channel approach and get ColaLife everywhere. We didn’t start with a website and expect people to find us, we went to all the places potential supporters might be. So we are:
- On Facebook - facebook.com/colalife
- On Twitter - twitter.com/colalife
- On Flickr - flickr.com/groups/colalife
And I’ve just set up vimeo.com/colalife. We didn’t have a website and this blog until we were well into the campaign and even now this acts as an aggregator of content from other places. No images are loaded on the blog, for example, they are all on Flickr.
A key missing element in this approach was the fact that we could not get youtube.com/colalife because it was already in place - may be it was set up by a ColaLife supporter - but it had never been used. Anyway, a handful of ColaLife supporters who work for Google (who own YouTube) worked some magic last week and now we have The ColaLife Channel on YouTube. Take a look.
What others are saying about ColaLife- ColaLife on Flickr
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