Prof leads charge to develop WHO center at FAMU

FAMU Professor Jane Barber’s services are in heavy demand from the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

Barber, who focuses on agricultural pesticide application, has been working with the WHO's pesticide evaluation program for the past year now to develop guidelines for "Efficacy Testing of Insecticides for Indoor and Outdoor Ground Applied Space Spray Applications."

Currently, she is a research leader for the John Mulrennan Public Health Entomology Research and Education Center in Panama City. Her area of specialty is mosquito adulticide.

The purpose of the draft document is to provide specific and standardized procedures and criteria for efficacy testing and the evaluation of the named products. Its aim is to harmonize the testing procedures used by laboratories and institutions throughout the world to generate data for registration and labeling of such products by national authorities.

This collaboration with the world's leading authority on health and well-being is an honor for the university. The guidelines are in the editorial stage and will be available in the near future from the WHO’s website.

The ultimate goal is to make FAMU an official collaborating center of the WHO, a mark of distinction received by currently only five centers in the world. The WHO fully funds all its research projects. This would be a huge financial benefit for FAMU and open up tremendous learning opportunities for students.

The Mulrennan Center is part of FAMU’s College of Engineering Sciences Technology and Agriculture.