I recently met with Dr. David Bangsberg, who — in addition to being Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard School of Medicine — is the director of the Center for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital, of the International Programs at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, and of the International Program for the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research.

He reflected on his work with the Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda saying that “the role of academic institutions both locally and globally is twofold: to come up with innovative interventions to prevent and treat the world’s greatest diseases and to train the next generation of leaders.” He’s joining other leaders today and tomorrow to discuss the role of academic institutions in solving global health delivery problems at the Global Health Delivery symposium hosted by Harvard Medical School.

As one of the expert moderators guiding the Adherence & Retention community on GHDonline.org, he insisted that the “major barrier to successful adherence and retention in care in poor regions is largely structural and economical,” and talked about a project looking at real-time adherence with the use of the Wisepill device in patients taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) in rural Uganda. (Dr. Jessica Haberer, who’s been working on that project and on wireless technology for ART adherence monitoring for several years, shared practical insights on the roll-out of this technology in the GHDonline community.)