Global Health

• The top 10 restaurants in our vicinity, the best cities to visit, the best movies to watch.
• To understand whether the rankings were any good you’d want know who was doing the ranking.
• These are exactly the same questions that are worth asking when looking at the international ranking of universities.
• The experts noted that rankings were massively overvalued, and reinforced global, regional and national inequalities.

Who does the ranking, and how

• They all ultimately generate an index or score from the data they collect.
• They are not completely transparent about what they measure and how much each component of the measure counts.
• For example, Times Higher Education sends out a survey to academics who are invited to rate their own – or other – institutions.
• The don’t count everything, they don’t count it equally and they don’t tell people who get the rankings how they have weighted what they do count.

Why should we care?

• In addition, a lot of public money goes into universities.
• We, the public, should care how that money is spent.
• That is a good university; it is fulfilling an important social function.
• There are so many important questions to be asking about a higher education system.

Do we have the right mix of tertiary education institutions and do they fit together well?
Are our research institutions producing enough high quality research to help us develop as a nation or region?
Are they producing enough master’s or PhD graduates to staff other tertiary education institutions (as well as other sectors in society)?
The rankings steer universities away from these key endeavours. An obsession with ranking creates perverse incentives to act to improve a rank rather than get on with the worthwhile work of universities.

What to do?

• Profit-driven companies will inevitably drive ranking systems towards making more profit rather than towards the public interest and social functions of universities.
• We need ranking institutions to be completely transparent so we can see whether it is useful information.
• Once we understand what the rankings are, and what they are not, we will not value their reports as much.

• Sharon Fonn works at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg South Africa and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
• She is a founder of and the co-director of CARTA.

• The Belgium House is an initiative from European Business Summits and a group of leading Belgian companies, with the support of the Belgian federal government, to showcase Belgian technology and innovation.
• Prime Minister Alexander De Croo is hosting three flagship events at the Belgium House encapsulating Belgium's commitment to drive progress for all by embracing openness , innovation and global partnerships.
• On Tuesday, Belgium demonstrated its green transition leadership during the "Clean Tech Innovation on the Road to Net Zero" discussion.
• "Davos is the perfect forum to invite others to join us in uncovering sustainable and innovative solutions for global challenges."

• ROCHESTER, Minn., Jan. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- World Sleep Society is issuing a global call to action for health advocates to organize sleep health awareness activities on and around Friday, March 15, 2024, the next World Sleep Day.
• The sleep professional members of World Sleep Society and industry leaders across over 80 countries are organizing local, regional and national activities to promote sleep health.
• "World Sleep Day is the perfect opportunity to combine efforts towards sleep awareness, education, outreach and community engagement that work toward reducing sleep disparities and ensuring equitable access to healthy sleep for everyone," says Lourdes DelRosso, MD, PhD, co-chair of World Sleep Day.
• World Sleep Society encourages individuals and organizations worldwide to celebrate healthy sleep, raise awareness of sleep disorders and advance sleep health.

• New York, Dec. 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On December 8-9, the "International Forum on Omega-3 and Global Health", co-sponsored by the Omega-3 and Global Health Research Institute, the International Society for Omega-3 Research, and eChinaHealth, gathered nearly 1,000 top scholars and enterprise representatives in the field of Omega-3 worldwide.
• As the founder of Omega-3 and Global Health Research Institute and the president of International Society for Omega-3 Research, Prof. Kang Jingxuan gave a keynote speech titled "Omega-3 as a Solution to Global Health Problems: Opportunities and Challenges" at the beginning of the forum.
• As a major partner in the past years, Huison Biotech has been focusing on the industrialization of Omega-3 for 23 years.
• At the forum, we demonstrated Huison Schizochytrium Powder, Organic DHA Algal Oil and application cases for global industry insiders.