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For
more than a decade now, leaders have looked to Atlanta as a powerhouse
for global health. With the presence of heavyweights such as Emory University,
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Carter Center,
CARE, and the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, Atlanta does
indeed rival Geneva on the world stage in public health. That reputation
just got another boost with establishment of a new Global Health Institute
(GHI) at Emory.
Funded with $110 million from university
resources, the institute will work globally to cure disease, develop vaccines,
develop health infrastructures, expand research collaborations, and train
scientists and students. In short, the effort—which brings together
existing strong programs in global health and powerful partner alliances—allows
Emory to take on some of the most pressing health challenges around the
world, particularly in poorer countries.
Jeffrey Koplan, vice president for academic
health affairs and former director of the CDC, directs the institute,
bringing decades of on-the-ground experience in global health leadership
to the new initiative. He has worked on virtually every public health
issue, from smallpox and AIDS to the Bhopal chemical disaster, and in
dozens of countries. He has collaborated on a commission on macroeconomics
and health in the Caribbean, on a study of childhood obesity in the United
States and Mexico, on a research advisory evaluation for academic public
health in the United Kingdom, and as a board member of a Nigerian journal
of clinical and biomedical research.
James Curran, another world-renowned global
health leader, dean of Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH),
and former AIDS czar at CDC, will serve as chair of the board of directors.
Win-win
partnerships
The inaugural program of the institute is the International Association
of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), an alliance of organizations
similar to CDC that are dedicated to improving public health infrastructure
around the world. Founded in 2006 by the directors of 39 national public
health institutes, IANPHI will now benefit from a five-year, $20 million
grant from the Gates Foundation to Emory in partnership with Finland’s
National Public Health Institute, KTL. IANPHI’s goal is to enable
low-resource countries to develop well organized and successfully functioning
CDC-like institutes of their own. IANPHI teams are now working in Uganda,
Mozambique, and Angola to develop this capacity, and the organization
is seeking further expansion in Malawi and parts of Asia.
When public health institutes around the
world are bolstered, everyone benefits, says Koplan. “In our increasingly
interconnected society, the public health issues of one country can quickly
affect the entire world. Each country can learn from all the others.”
Other programs the GHI is supporting include
the following:
A drug
discovery training program with the Republic of South Africa. Led by Dennis
Liotta, Emory chemist and co-inventor of several of the most successful
and commonly used anti-HIV/AIDS drugs, the program will equip African
scientists with skills to discover new drugs. Visiting scholars from South
Africa will receive training at Emory. Projects will focus on research
that impacts populations most affected by diseases historically ignored
by the pharmaceutical industry. The government of South Africa, a supporter
of this program, is offering significant incentives to startup biotech
companies, creating an environment to nurture drug discovery in South
Africa.
A vaccine
partnership with the International Center for Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology in New Delhi, India. Led by Rafi Ahmed, director of the
Emory Vaccine Center and a world expert in immune memory and vaccine development,
the Center for Global Vaccines will focus on vaccines for infectious diseases.
Already, the partners have made significant progress in researching vaccines
for malaria, hepatitis C and E, tuberculosis, and HIV. Currently, India
has 5.7 million people living with HIV, more than any other country. Each
year, India has 1.7 million new cases of tuberculosis, which causes more
illness and deaths in Indian adults than any other communicable disease.
Expansion
of a collaboration between Emory and the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica
of Mexico. Led by Reynaldo Martorell, Woodruff Professor and Chair of
the Hubert Department of Global Health at the RSPH, the Partners in Global
Health program is working for sustainable strategies for research, capacity
building, training, and student exchange. In the past, collaboration has
been limited to topics such as nutrition, infectious dieases, environmental
health, and maternal and child health. However, the expansion will allow
the partners to take on more disciplines, particularly in the social sciences.
A
global health attitude
Koplan, as an epidemiologist, cautions against claiming 100% probability
of success for the GHI. However, based on the programs it is building
and the partners it is bringing together, its probability of success is
high, he says. What is different about Emory’s effort, he says,
is its university-wide commitment to global health. “We have an
obligation to involve the entire university in building collaborations
that will benefit other nations as well as our own,” he says.
The second element of success, according
to Koplan? A global health attitude. That translates into going to the
developing world without developed-nation dictates of how good health
should be attained. “Rather, we will behave as partners and colleagues,
learning from each other.”
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