The Fogarty International Center (FIC) recently awarded a grant in the amount of $355,000 to the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), 9500 Gilman Drive, to start a multi-disciplinary, global health program.
“Our mission is to create a global health program that makes UCSD world-class in terms of international health,” said Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D., chief of the Division of International Health and Cross-Cultural Medicine. “The goal is really to provide every UCSD student with international experience, starting with School of Medicine students but eventually bringing it to undergraduate students as well.”
FIC, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issued a call for proposals and selected the best ones. NIH awarded grants to nine new global health programs across the country.
The School of Medicine and Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UCSD will partner with San Diego State University (SDSU) Graduate School of Public Health. The schools have worked together in the past, and funds from the grant will allow the institutions to focus on the U.S./Mexico border region.
“We will be creating a new joint doctoral program in global health that will serve as the cornerstone of our program,” Strathdee said. “We are also going to have a visiting scholars program that is going to bring people from other countries to UCSD to be able to interact with students and faculty and hopefully be able to jump-start some new collaborations.”
Infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, STDs and tuberculosis, as well as environmental factors caused by air and water pollution, are among many border health issues that the new program will study.
“This all started with a family from La Jolla, who requested to remain anonymous and who made a gift to UCSD in the form of an endowed chair in the name of Harold Simon, who is still alive and a La Jolla resident,” Strathdee said. “He is a professor who was the first division chief of the Division of International Health at UCSD and is still a member of our division, and the family is still very close to him and very impressed by him.”
Strathdee, an infectious disease specialist, was chosen to serve as the first Harold Simon Chair. Part of her duties relative to the new program include sponsoring internships for students from developing countries as well as creating more research and training opportunities.
“We are hoping to attract new faculty if we are fortunate enough to keep growing and become world-renowned in the issues of global health,” she said. “Right now, the NIH budget is shrinking as opposed to getting larger, and that is why we have become more dependent on some of these foundations and benefactors who have been very generous in helping us get off the ground.”
For further information, see www.ucsd.edu.