From The National Catholic Reporter: 

"Pope Francis has brought a fresh perspective to established Catholic teaching, panelists said March 13 at an event hosted by Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life to mark the pontiff's 10th anniversary.

Francis, formerly Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected the Catholic Church’s 266th pope March 13, 2013, after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation. During his pontificate, Francis has emphasized themes such as caring for people and creation, an approach some liken to a 'seamless garment.'"

Read more.

GHR partner, Twin Cities-based St. Jerome Catholic School, provides Pre-K to 8 education to over 200 students, preparing them for the academic, social, and spiritual opportunities and challenges they may face in today's world. With talented, supportive teachers and staff, and a keen eye for data and intentional planning, the school strives for consistent academic growth. In the past five years, the school has welcomed a large community of multi-lingual learners who are part of a Karen refugee community. Word has spread that the school is a safe, nurturing and excellent school home for many recent immigrants from Myanmar and Burma, where children will find their social and emotional needs met. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to virtual instruction, many students at St. Jerome missed significant amounts of instruction time. This has led to observable learning loss, particularly among the many emergent bilingual students still developing their expertise in academic English. In addressing the same, St. Jerome’s principal has identified middle school students as the target population to participate in a new educational model of direct instruction, small group interventions and homework assistance for the next three years in their learning journey. 

With support from GHR for this new model, the school is providing targeted instruction for core subjects, hired an additional English teacher, and hired an intervention specialist who will work directly with students and teachers to monitor student progress and implement changes. “With the small class sizes and a significant amount of 1:1 instruction that has been able to occur, we have seen students go from below to above grade level in their language usage scores. Also, students who are already highly achieving are getting above grade level instruction allowing them to stretch," said Teacher Emma McGlone.

Students are already showing signs of benefiting academically from these interventions – an uplifting sign for the future of this project. A middle school student shared, “We can work at our own pace and we get attention according to what we need, because the teachers know us really well.” 

GHR works to design new and replicable models for high-quality Catholic education. Learn more about this work here. 

​Several GHR partners are responding to the devastating disasters in Turkey and Syria, resulting from two massive earthquakes in early February. More than 50,000 people were killed by the quakes and resulting tremors, and many, many more are now displaced.
 
GHR partners Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) are providing emergency relief, shelter, and ground coordination to serve the many now displaced. Both organizations are attending to myriad, developing needs among the devastation, in partnership with local relief organizations, local authorities and the Caritas network. In addition, Religions for Peace is providing support through its network of international religious councils and the Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund, which to date has served 14 million people in 30 countries across five regions.
 
In partnership with these inspiring organizations, GHR sends our love and prayers to all those affected.

UISG Catholic Care for Children International and GHR will host a convening in Nairobi, Kenya, from May 16-18, 2023, entitled "Reading the Signs of the Times Together: Catholic Care for Children.” This gathering will bring together episcopal leaders, government representatives and Catholic sisters from east Africa to reflect upon and discern the Catholic church’s growing commitment to ensure all children are safe. The centerpiece of the convening will be Catholic Care for Children, a sister-led, charism-driven movement to see that all children can grow up in safe, nurturing families. This will offer an opportunity to consider and collectively reflect upon the progress made in advancing family-based care, and the implications of national legal frameworks and policies in east Africa that now favor family-based care over institutionalization.
 
Grounded in GHR’s Catholic roots, with deepening appreciation for the role of faith in animating and shaping care, GHR partners with Catholic sisters—women whose leadership, service and spiritual witness have advanced the common good through a profound commitment to working on behalf of the vulnerable and marginalized. With the support of the Rome-based International Union of Superiors General and national associations of women religious, Catholic sisters are emerging as champions of care reform. Working with governmental, civic, and church leaders, and within their local communities, they are leading efforts to transition from institutional care toward family- and community-based care. 

From L to R: Yende Anderson, Pa Lor, Tarra McNally

As we strive to deepen the impact of Global programs, and build capacity to best to support our partners, we are thrilled to welcome some exceptional talent to the newly expanded GHR Global team.

Yende Anderson, Program Officer, joins us from the Minnesota Department of Health. She has a background in state and national policy, stakeholder engagement, program design and implementation, aimed at integrating immigrant international medical graduates into Minnesota’s healthcare delivery system and other strategies to increase access to primary care. She has also designed health programming for women in West Africa and her home country of Liberia. 

Pa Lor, Program Associate, joins us from Habitat for Humanity, where she oversaw operations for the Homeowner Development Team. She has a background in administration, planning, data management, and client service. Pa will operate as the central coordinator and grants administrator for the GHR Global team.

Tarra McNally, Program Officer, joins us from the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. She has a background in research and community-centered program design and evaluation with a focus on global public health and faith, and experience working in Catholic and international spaces. She was a member of the external team that evaluated GHR’s Inter-religious Action initiative.

​As a signatory of the Joint Statement on the Forcible Transfer, Deportation, and Adoption of Children from Ukraine by Russia, GHR joins several of our partners and others in the care sector in condemning the forcible transfer, deportation and adoption of children from Ukraine, resulting in permanently separating children from their families, communities and culture.

We call upon the Russian authorities, including Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, to immediately cease these practices. Urgent efforts must be made to ensure these children are reunited with their families and can be raised by their own relatives in their own culture and communities, speaking their own language.

Read the full statement here.

GHR partners Eli Lilly and Brigham and Women's Hospital announced results from the A4 Study, a landmark in Alzheimer’s Disease research as the first large-scale clinical trial testing an Alzheimer’s prevention strategy in the general population. Unfortunately, A4 was not successful in preventing cognitive decline due to Alzheimer’s Disease. 

Funded by a public-private-philanthropic partnership involving the National Institutes of Aging (part of National Institutes of Health), Eli Lilly and Company, Alzheimer’s Association, GHR Foundation, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and several other organizations and donors, A4 was a massive ten-year undertaking. It involved dozens of research sites, hundreds of investigators, and thousands of patient volunteers. The study screened healthy adults aged 65-85 for the presence of amyloid plaques. Those with accumulated plaques were treated with Lilly’s anti-amyloid drug solanezumab. 

Although the study did not achieve its goal, A4 is providing key learnings for future prevention trials about how to identify patients at risk, when to intervene, and what level of treatment may be needed.

Read the full press release here.

From Eli Lilly and Company:

INDIANAPOLIS, March 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Eli Lilly and Company announced today that solanezumab did not slow the progression of cognitive decline due to Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology when initiated in individuals with amyloid plaque but no clinical symptoms of the disease, known as the preclinical stage of AD1. Solanezumab only targets soluble amyloid beta. The treatment did not clear plaque or halt accumulation of amyloid in participants treated with the drug in the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's disease (A4) Study.

"Results of the A4 Study clearly showed that the primary and secondary endpoints were not met. Therefore, the A4 Study concludes our clinical development of solanezumab and indicates that targeting soluble amyloid beta through this mechanism is not effective in this population," said John Sims, head of medical, global brand development – solanezumab, for Eli Lilly and Company. "While this study was negative, the unique data generated have increased our understanding of preclinical Alzheimer's disease and will advance the next generation of AD prevention studies. Raw data and analyses will be made widely available to researchers through the public-private partnership with the NIH-funded Alzheimer's Clinical Trial Consortium. These data will serve the scientific community and enable Lilly and other drug developers to enhance our clinical trial designs for other potential medicines targeting Alzheimer's disease."

Launched in 2013, the A4 Study was a first-of-its-kind secondary prevention trial, enrolling more than 1,100 individuals between 65 and 85 years of age who had PET-imaging evidence of amyloid plaque accumulation in the brain and who did not have clinical impairment. Participants were randomized to either solanezumab or placebo and then treated for approximately 4.5 years.

Solanezumab binds only to soluble amyloid-beta protein and was not expected to significantly remove deposited amyloid plaques. Donanemab and remternetug, other Lilly investigational antibodies currently being developed in Phase 3, are different from solanezumab in that they specifically target deposited amyloid plaque and have been shown to lead to plaque clearance in treated patients.

More than 6.5 million Americans are currently suffering dementia due to Alzheimer's disease2, and scientists expect this number to nearly triple by 20503. It is estimated that more than 20 million Americans and approximately 315 million people globally have preclinical Alzheimer's disease, the earliest stages of the disease 4, 5.

During the double-blind portion of the study, results showed:

• Solanezumab did not slow cognitive decline on the primary outcome measure, the Preclinical Alzheimer Cognitive Composite (PACC) [mean change (95% CI): placebo -1.4 (‑1.76, ‑1.04); solanezumab -1.69 (-2.13, -1.26); p-value 0.26)]. The PACC was developed to measure the aspects of cognitive decline relevant in preclinical AD and is an equally weighted composite that tests episodic memory, timed executive function, and global cognition.
• Secondary clinical outcome results were consistent with the primary outcome, numerically favoring placebo compared with solanezumab.
• 36.1% of participants starting at the stage of preclinical AD progressed on the Clinical Dementia Rating-Global Scale (defined as CDR-global score greater than 0 at two consecutive visits or final visit). CDR-GS is a clinician-rated scale that provides an overall assessment of the participant's clinical stage of AD. Similar rates of progression were seen with both the solanezumab and placebo groups.
• On amyloid PET imaging, amyloid continued to accumulate over time in both the placebo (65.9 Centiloid baseline, 17.5 Centiloid increase) and solanezumab (66.2 Centiloid baseline, 12.1 Centiloid increase) groups.
• Higher baseline amyloid levels were strongly associated with a greater risk of progression to symptomatic Alzheimer's disease (p-value<0.001). 
• The solanezumab and placebo groups were well-balanced at baseline, and results were consistent across multiple analysis methods and models.
• Safety results in the A4 Study were consistent with the safety profile observed in previous solanezumab Phase 3 studies. Amyloid-Related Imaging Abnormalities with edema/effusion (ARIA-E) were uncommon and similar between treatment and placebo groups.

"These findings indicate that amyloid is a key driver of cognitive decline at the preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease. Solanezumab did not substantially impact amyloid plaque burden in the brain, and unfortunately did not slow cognitive decline. These data suggest that we may need to be more aggressive with amyloid removal even at this very early stage of disease," said Reisa Sperling, M.D., a neurologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the A4 Study project director. "We are so very grateful to the participants, their study partners, the clinical trial site investigators and staff, and the entire study team for their longstanding dedication to this important study. It is imperative that we learn everything we can to inform ongoing and future trials in our quest to prevent memory loss due to Alzheimer's disease."

The A4 Study is a landmark public-private partnership, funded by the National Institute on Aging (part of National Institutes of Health), Eli Lilly and Company, Alzheimer's Association, GHR Foundation, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and several other organizations and donors. The A4 Study is coordinated by the Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI) at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California and is a project of the Alzheimer's Clinical Trials Consortium (ACTC).

Full disclosure of the study results will be shared later in the year at a scientific conference.

About the A4 Study 
The Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's disease (A4) Study is a Phase 3, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in males and females ages 65 to 85 years with preclinical AD (that is, in individuals with evidence of brain amyloid pathology on PET amyloid imaging who are clinically unimpaired but at high risk for cognitive decline). 

The A4 Study tested whether solanezumab could slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease-related cognitive decline, brain imaging, and other biomarkers over the course of approximately 4.5 years. The study included more than 1,100 participants at 67 sites throughout the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia.