The Next Post

I don't have a good name for this post so it is just going to be the next post. This week was incredibly busy at work. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I helped to run the Immunization and Vaccine-related Implementation Research (IVIR) Advisory Committee meeting, an international body of experts in the methodology of global infectious disease cost-effectiveness and implementation research. I even got my own nametag:

On Tuesday evening, I presented to this committee of expert advisers on a new-ish framework for grading the quality of evidence in studies that they will need to start using and/or propose adjustments to the framework in order to use. It was a quick little 5-minute presentation, but it was exciting to have face-time with so many people in the vaccine world. The rest of the meeting I was pretty much in charge of scrolling through people's slides for their presentations (see the laptop next to me) --- not a problem when the individual was in the room, but really really hard when someone gave a presentation via teleconference. I also got to visit with Meghan Stack, who I worked for at the International Vaccine Access Center at Hopkins all of last year --- we are in the same field of research and we went an entire year without figuring that out until we met in Geneva... oh, life. This is what Salle D of the WHO (one of several conference rooms) looks like, if you're interested:

On Thursday, I had meetings with Raymond and Mark Jit (London researcher/professor that I have mentioned before) about my two projects. I have gotten started on my "secondary" project validating their HPV vaccine costing tool for country level introduction, but my primary project is a little bit in flux. After some feedback on Mark's broader economic impact of vaccines presentation to the advisory committee, I may be changing topics somewhat, but the next 2 weeks will be focused on the HPV vaccine work in any case. I am really looking forward to working with Raymond and Mark, and it is possible that our research collaboration may extend beyond this fall --- which would mean the possibility of more public health publications for me, always a good thing.

Friday after work I headed to Coppet, a small neighboring town of Geneva to sort of house-sit/babysit for a Hopkins professor that currently lives there. Here's the amazing view from the house:

Yesterday (Saturday), I got up and went back down to Geneva from Coppet to meet the other 3 Hopkins interns for a little day trip to Lausanne and Montreux. I don't think I ever posted that picture of all of us... here we are:

From left to right: Jennifer, me, Jill, and Victor.

As previously stated, we took the train from Geneva to Lausanne, and from there we took the La Suisse ferry down the lake to Montreux:

It was unfortunately a fairly rainy day, but we were able to see some of the vineyards of the famous Lavaux wine region, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Plus, we had delicious hot chocolates.

When we arrived in Montreux, we went straight to a Lonely Planet-recommended restaurant at a local hotel --- La Rouvenaz. It was definitely a great find --- they had gluten free spaghetti!!

After lunch (and a delicious creme brulee for dessert), we saw the statue of Freddie Mercury, as he wrote and recorded some of his last songs in Montreux.

Me looking up to see what his pose actually looks like:

A better attempt at the pose:

We then took the bus to see the Chateau de Chillon, a really old Swiss castle (11th or 12th century) written about in a poem by Lord Byron called The Prisoner of Chillon.

Post-castle viewing, it was mostly wandering around Montreux, which probably would have been better in less rain. But we definitely made a day of it! I spent night in Coppet again (best sort of babysitting gig ever) and spent today working and watching TV (my favorite). Back to the grind this week gathering data for that costing tool validation!

Interlaken 2.0

What a fabulous weekend. Fabulous enough that I must post about it right away, because this week promises to be a very hectic one at work (so probably no new posts until the end of the week). Jill and I went to Interlaken this weekend! And I name this post Interlaken 2.0 only because it was my second time visiting Interlaken, not because it was superior to my visit last year with Melanie. Speaking of my trip with Melanie last year... turns out that our 2011 canyoning adventure is famous! I stayed at the same hostel --- Balmer's Herberge, aka the oldest private hostel in Switzerland --- again this year, and on Friday night, Jill and I went to check out the bar downstairs and there was video being projected on the wall of all the different adventure sports that you can do in Interlaken. And Melanie and I were in the video! It was just a few quick shots of us canyoning, but it was definitely us. Got this weekend off to a fun and exciting start!

Jill and I had originally planned to do our adventure sports Saturday and hiking on Sunday, but we ended up switching the days around since the weather wasn't as great on Saturday. But we ended up having a really fabulous hike instead!

If you can make out the picture I took of my hiking map, on Saturday morning, we took a train from Interlaken up to Lauterbrunnen and from there we took a gondola to Grütschalp that looked like this:

But the view in Grütschalp looked like this:

 We had an incredible, lovely hike with amazing views of the mountains from Grütschalp to a cute little town called Mürren, where we ate some super yummy caprese salads (sorry there's no picture, Mom) before taking another gondola to Gimmelwald and walking down the mountain to Stechelberg. Great names, right?

Some more photos along the hike:

Saturday night we had traditional Swiss fare --- raclette, or melted cheese with other stuff (in this case, potatoes, pickles, and onions:

Then today (Sunday) was the most incredible experience of my life --- I went paragliding!! Took a van to the top of a mountain above Interlaken (about 2,500 feet), got strapped to a parachute with a very experienced guide attached (Michael, who has been paragliding since the year I was born), take a few running strides and then glided on the air for about 15 minutes before coming to a safe landing. It was such a rush and such a blast! I would do it again in a heartbeat. I took several photos myself while up there, but I also paid for Michael to take some so you can see me up there!

So here are a few pictures that I took:

And here are the super amazing professional ones:

To sum up: I highly recommend paragliding if you get the chance. I had a wonderful weekend and I am so glad I went back to Interlaken a second time. I am now completely exhausted, it is almost midnight, and I am going to bed!

Work Update and the Swiss Romande Orchestra

Yesterday was a pretty fantastic day for me, so I just wanted to add another update to let those interested know about my work. As previously mentioned, I am working with Dr. Raymond Hutubessy, who works on implementation research at the Initiative for Vaccine Research within the department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals. If you are confused, so am I... I actually made the following PowerPoint slide in order to figure out where I am within WHO:

So at the WHO Headquarters, I am in the IMR group of the IVR cluster in the IVB department of the FWC office. Whoa. Moving on...

As part of his IMR work, Dr. Hutubessy has been working on a project with several pieces termed the "broader economic impact of vaccines" or BEIV. Yesterday, I had a conference call with Dr. Hutubessy and his BEIV colleague, Dr. Mark Jit --- who works on economic evaluation of vaccine-preventable diseases at the Health Protection Agency in the United Kingdom and also in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine --- to discuss my research this fall. 

It was a very successful conference call. Based on what has already been done, what will be most helpful for the next steps of their work, and what my personal interests are --- I am going to be doing a systematic review of the long-term productivity gains due to vaccines for enteric diseases (gastrointestinal/diarrheal diseases like rotavirus, cholera, and typhoid). I am working on my research questions, search terms, a list of criteria to grade the strength of the evidence, and a work plan proposal over the next week, and then we are meeting in person next week Thursday to hammer out the specifics. Dr. Hutubessy and Dr. Jit also asked for my help on a secondary project validating their new HPV vaccine costing tool --- since HPV has long been an academic interest, I am also really looking forward to contributing to this project. I only have 3 more days really to get the work done for my primary project, however, as next week Tuesday and Wednesday is the Immunization and Vaccines in Implementation Research (IVIR) Advisory Committee meeting that Dr. Hutubessy is in charge of and I will be attending in its entirety (I'll be helping out with a few logistics and taking notes, but my future research is also going to be mentioned in Dr. Jit's presentation on BEIV!). Anyway, I'd be happy to elaborate on any of the above if you're interested, but I am doing my best to not make this too much of a "toot my own horn" type of post, even though that is probably exactly what it is... The point is really just that I'm excited and looking forward to contributing to this work.

Also, after work, Jill and I also went to a FREE private rehearsal of the Swiss Romande Orchestra at Victoria Hall. So we listened to the orchestra practice two pieces and then listened to the conductor go through the music with them and give notes. The most was great, although it was a bit tedious going through the notes portion. However, two things about it were quite interesting to me: (1) it seemed as if the first violin was the "captain" of the orchestra, and (2) the conductor making the sounds of musical instruments actually sounds different in French than in English, although to the best of my knowledge musical instruments don't have a native language.

P.S. I not only made the pictures in this blog post extra large, but I also went back to the previous posts and made the old pictures bigger, too --- in case you want to revisit!

Bern and Lucerne

If you read Saturday morning's post --- I actually missed that bus because I took the 10 minutes to write an update. But it is just a 5 minute walk to the tram, so I still made my 7:45am train to Bern.

I traveled with fellow Hopkins students Jill and Jennifer to Bern --- we arrived around 9:30am. We wandered down the main strip in old town Bern --- and meandered through the Saturday morning market:

Stopped for picture time in front of the Bundeshäuser --- Swiss Parliament:

And snapped a picture of this famous clock tower that was Einstein's inspiration for his theory of relativity when he lived in an apartment in Bern in 1905:

Unfortunately, Einstein's actual apartment was closed to viewing due to water damage.

Next was climbing the 344 steps up Münster Cathedral --- its 100m tower is Switzerland's tallest. We got some pretty amazing views out of it:

That second picture is me with Jennifer Lam --- the Hopkins PhD student we also traveled with to Bern.

Then we saw the sight for which Bern apparently gets its name --- because way back when the city's founder killed a bear hunting in this area --- so today there are still bears living in Bärenpark:

This location is certainly much improved over the "bear pit" that the bears lived in until 2009, but it still seems a pretty small enclosure to me. Jill was a bit depressed over the whole thing. But we all agreed the bears looked cute enough to cuddle! Even if that would be a really, really bad idea...

We ate at Lonely Planet recommended Altes Tramdepot next to the bear park. There were a couple food-related mishaps since I forgot to bring my German celiac disease card (I have great diet cards in several languages that I laminated to take with me everywhere --- and promptly forgot them on the first trip...) but I did end up eating a yummy hash brown-like dish called rösti:

After lunch, Jennifer left to head back to another town she wanted to visit on her way back to Geneva. Jill and I walked back on the other side of the river for a few more great views of beautiful Bern:

Then we split up for a bit and I went to the Kunst Fine Arts museum to see some great modern art (the little museum had Chagall, Marc, Kandinsky, Pollock and Picasso pieces --- who knew), before meeting back up for the 5pm train to Lucerne.

Lucerne (or Luzern in the German) is just about an hour train ride from Bern, so the sun was still shining when we got there.

It was a quick 15 minute walk to the hostel --- Backpackers Lucerne --- which was right on the lake (if you ever need a Lucerne hostel --- it was definitely a great place for 30CHF!). Saturday night activities included dinner, visiting with our Aussie roommate at the hostel who is in the middle of backpacking for 6 months (I could never do that...), and going to bed.

Sunday morning we got up and headed out to grab breakfast and take a ferry across the lake so we could do a relatively easy 3.5 hour hike that Lonely Planet suggested. Some views from the ferry:

Unfortunately, when we arrived in Bürgenstock, we realized that the funicular up the mountain wasn't running on Sunday, so we had to figure something else out. Jill and I just started walking around lake. Stopped for this picture:

And this one:

And eventually we realized --- hey, we could either wander around back and forth until the next ferry comes in 4 hours... OR... we could walk back to the hostel in Lucerne. Guess what we decided? So Sunday turned into an absolutely epic 16.4-kilometer (10.2-mile) walk around the lake back to the hostel. Here's what the route looks like:

 
So we walked mostly around the lake and the weather and the views were absolutely gorgeous.  

About halfway through, we stopped for lunch in a little town called Hergiswil, and I got a pork chop and salad that looked like this:

We had a little more lakeside walking after Hergiswil, but after we got to Horw (I spent all day trying to pronounce it, and I gave up), it was mostly urban walking. We had a few missteps and backtracking and several interesting encounters, including a horse and a paraglider, but also these weird little houses and gardens that we could NOT figure out:

They didn't even appear big enough to lay down in and yet there were people coming in and out of them, or sitting at tables in front of them. Anyway, pretty soon we started to see signs for Lucerne:

And finally, 5 hours later, we arrived back at the hostel! We actually rushed straight from the hostel back to the train station to catch the 5pm train back to Geneva... and I slept quite soundly last night and woke up without too much soreness today! But I am incredibly proud of myself in general. Weekend trip one was a resounding success! Next weekend: Interlaken.