Global Health Frontiers' four-part newsmagazine series premieres on public television’s WORLD Channel

Mar 23 2016

The acclaimed public television documentary series Global Health Frontiers expands to a weekly newsmagazine with four one-hour episodes combining compelling journalism from the leading edges of global health developments with a fast-paced and energetic style. Within Global Health Frontiers’ newsmagazine format, the programs feature three separate stories, each a short documentary that follows engaging characters through journeys, trials and tests that define the relentless work of global health today. Viewers will witness the unvarnished truth, the successes and failures, and the inspiring tenacity of people who answer the call to meet this century’s defining challenge.

The series premieres on public television’s WORLD Channel Thursday, March 31 with broadcasts of the first episode at 6 pm and 9 pm ET and 11 pm PT (check local listings), with various encores during daytime and overnight. To find local airdates, visit http://www.aptonline.org or visit your local public television station website. To preview series segments, visit http://www.globalhealthfrontiers.org.

“Global Health Frontiers brings television viewers inside the critical work in global health like no other program today,” explains Emmy Award-winning veteran news correspondent Gary Strieker, executive producer of the series and former CNN Nairobi bureau chief and global environment correspondent. “Pioneers of prevention and change are making advances against infection and pandemics to make them preventable and treatable, and we report their stories with captivating first-person storytelling.”

Working with an advisory panel including eminent experts at the Harvard Global Health Institute, the UCSF Global Health Group, and The Carter Center, the stories covered by the series represent a broad range of critical global health issues worldwide:

3/31: VIRUS HUNTERS, CHILD IMMUNIZATIONS, ISLAND FEVER: Tracking potential pandemic ‘hot spots’ in Southern China; hope for eliminating killer diseases in Moradabad, India; stopping the spread of a deadly virus from mosquitos in St. George’s, Grenada.

4/7: MEDICINE BRIGADES, ASIA LIGHTS UP, AMBULANCE START-UP: Cuban doctors provide Haiti’s first modern medical care; activists in the Philippines fight Big Tobacco; private enterprise introduces emergency medical care regardless of class in Mumbai, India.

4/14: HIDDEN HUNGER, GOLDEN RICE; LIFE-SAVING STOVES; ELIMINATING MALARIA: Conflict over GMO foods to eliminate childhood nutritional deficiencies; reducing deaths and debilities caused by indoor smoke; a model program in Indonesia has eliminated malaria.

4/21: STUNTED FUTURE, TROUBLE WITH TICKS, SAVING LIVES AT BIRTH: Contamination and malnourishment put 65 million children in India at risk; the battle against Lyme disease in Redding, CT; teaching best practices for better birth outcomes in Guatemala.

The launch of this four-part series is preceded on public television by the Global Health Frontiers documentaries Trachoma: Defeating a Blinding Curse; Dark Forest, Black Fly (river blindness); and the award-winning Foul Water, Fiery Serpent (Guinea worm).