Here is the latest in a series of profiles of academic difference makers produced as part of ASAP’s Impact: Global Poverty project. In this article, project Contributing Editor Sumaiyah Moolla interviews Professor Alan Fenwick of Imperial College London about his work leading the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, which delivers cures to diseases afflicting a huge proportion of the severely poor globally. If you would like to nominate an academic to be profiled in the series, please contact Luis Cabrera at a.l.cabrera@bham.ac.uk

Here are Thomas Pogge\’s closing comments at the “Impact: Global Poverty” meeting to launch ASAP in the UK, held at the University of Birmingham. He offers thoughts on the global potential of ASAP, as well as pitfalls to avoid. / Start with the thought that the central purpose of ASAP is to reduce poverty. Upstream from this purpose we must ask: what is poverty, what are we to measure our work against? Here, it is important to communicate with poor people themselves. Poor people may not make a strong distinction between poverty and other vulnerabilities; they may see lack of resources as intimately intertwined with vulnerability to violence, for example, and with indignities suffered from officials. Maybe we should then also see their problem in broader terms.