EMORY : in the world

Global Health Institute
By Rebecca Baggett

Some great ideas appear in a flash, while others come after months of careful thought and deliberation. The latter scenario is the case with the Emory Global Health Institute, a university-wide initiative whose mission is to advance Emory's efforts to improve health care around the world.

Established in September 2006 and officially announced to the public in January 2007, the Emory Global Health Institute is a direct result of the University's recent 18-month strategic planning process. According to Emory President James Wagner, "the Emory Global Health Institute is the flagship program fulfilling Emory's strategy to pursue the university-wide initiative 'Implementing Pathways to Global Health.'"

In addition to the strategic planning process, faculty and students from across the University engaged in a 14-month-long discussion to develop goals and objectives for the Emory Global Health Initiative, the precursor to the Institute. This multidisciplinary dialogue revealed the critical role all of Emory can play in improving global health. "The Emory Global Health Institute is a university-wide effort drawing on faculty expertise both within and beyond the health sciences," said Wagner. "There are essential roles for economics, government, law, religion, culture, art, and communications to play in advancing health issues around the world."

Jeffrey Koplan, vice president for Academic Health Affairs of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, is a natural choice to lead the Institute. A 26-year veteran of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Koplan served for six years as the Center's director.

Goals and Activities
The primary purpose of the Emory Global Health Institute is to support Emory faculty, students, and alumni in their work to find solutions to critical global health problems. Its goals are to strengthen the University's academic infrastructure around global health, develop and nurture global health partnerships, and foster global health research and scholarship. The Institute hopes to achieve these goals by identifying and hiring new faculty, providing funding support to faculty conducting innovative global health research and programs, expanding travel abroad learning opportunities for Emory students, establishing new global health training programs, and convening global health experts through conferences, seminars, and symposia.

In its first few months, the Institute has gotten off to a fast start. It has provided resources to support the hiring of Venkat Narayan, Hubert Professor of Global Health and Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, released its first request for proposals, announced 10 global health initiatives in the first round of funding (see sidebar on pp.16-17), and established an undergraduate minor in global health, culture, and society.

Why Emory?
The establishment of the Emory Global Health Institute is "a natural evolution for the University," Koplan explained. The Institute builds on the strong foundation in global health research and training laid by the Emory University School of Medicine, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, the Rollins School of Public Health, the Emory Vaccine Center, and other departments such as anthropology, biology, chemistry, theology, and area studies. "We are building on our strengths," Koplan said.

Emory's relationships with prominent public health organizations and agencies made it an ideal place to launch a world-class academic center for global health. The University's longstanding partnerships with neighboring organizations such as the CDC, The Carter Center, the Task Force for Child Survival, and CARE make Emory unique among its peer institutions. Its close linkage with the Georgia Institute of Technology is also important as engineering collaborations are crucial to the success of certain global health projects. And the relationships Koplan formed during his 26-year tenure at the CDC, and the new ones he is forging while leading the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded International Association of National Public Health Institutes, will facilitate partnership-building activities for the Institute.

While Emory is uniquely situated to found global health initiatives, the University has placed the Institute in a position that sets it apart from many other academic global health centers. To date, the Institute is the only center of its kind that has received a substantial internal investment from its home university. The University budgets $110 million for the Institute, with $55 million coming from strategic plan and building funds and $55 million from other sources. These funds have enabled the Institute to build programs quickly so that faculty and students can benefit immediately. This, in turn, should lead to better health, faster, for the people they are working to help.

FIRST PHASE OF THE EMORY GLOBAL HEALTH INSTITUTE-FUNDED INITIATIVES AND EVENTS

Center for Global Vaccines: A Collaboration between Emory University School of Medicine and the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB, New Delhi, India)
The Center for Global Vaccines (CGV) is a joint venture of the Emory Vaccine Center and the New Delhi-based International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. The primary purpose of the CGV is to improve the control of infectious diseases around the world with a special emphasis on those diseases that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations in the developing world.

Republic of South Africa Drug Discovery Training Program
Emory is collaborating with the Republic of South Africa (RSA) to train African scientists in early stage drug discovery with the goal of combating infectious and immunologic diseases that disproportionately affect impoverished populations in the developing world. Emory has unique strengths in drug discovery, particularly in developing country therapeutic needs such as HIV/AIDS. There is a dearth of drug discovery scientists in Africa.

Partners in Global Health: Emory University and the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica (INSP) of Mexico
The Partners in Global Health Program builds on an existing collaboration between Emory and the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica (INSP), located in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The purpose of the Partners in Global Health Program is to strengthen and significantly expand this existing relationship, and as a result, create new and innovative opportunities for interdisciplinary global health programs.

Community Partners Leadership Fellows Program, Phase I: Scenarios from Africa
The Community Partners Leadership Fellows Program provides fellowship opportunities at Emory to proven community leaders working for community-based organizations and non-governmental organizations located in Africa. This fellowship program is unique in that it targets community leaders, who are typically not eligible to apply for traditional academic fellowships. The program helps small- and medium-sized CBOs/NGOs that are partnering with Emory to develop their capacity by training the community-based leaders who are essential to their success.

Republic of Georgia Emergency Department Program
The purpose of the Republic of Georgia Emergency Department Program is to modernize the emergency departments of the Central Clinical (Republican) Hospital in Tbilisi and the Imereti Regional Hospital in Kutaisi, Republic of Georgia. This program builds on the successful partnership Emory University has with the Iashvili Children's Hospital in Tbilisi, which resulted in the transformation of its emergency services from a Soviet style "admitting room" to a modern emergency department.

Program in Globalization, Global Migration, and Health
The Emory Global Health Institute has provided seed funding to establish a research program to address the impact of globalization and global migration on the health of populations, specifically the effect on the cardio-metabolic risk factors of targeted populations. The program will develop and implement a scientific workshop, publish the proceedings, and publish a literature review on the current state of research regarding the cardio-metabolic risk factors.

Tobacco Technical Assistance Consortium Global Tobacco Control Initiative
The Tobacco Technical Assistance Consortium (TTAC) provides innovative trainings, technical assistance, and educational materials to strengthen partnerships in the U.S. tobacco control community. The TTAC Global Tobacco Control Initiative takes the organization's mission to the global arena by providing technical assistance to countries strategically targeted by the tobacco industry and to countries that are working to decrease tobacco use and increase tobacco free environments, starting with Canada, Thailand, and Uruguay.

Visiting Professor in Global Health Communications
In spring 2007, Arvind Singhal, Presidential Research Scholar and Professor at Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University lectured undergraduate and graduate classes and connected with Emory faculty members with an interest in global health and global health communications.

Global Government Health Partners Forum 2006
In November 2006, Emory's Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing coordinated the Global Government Health Partners Forum 2006: The Breaking Point � Human Resources for Health. The forum focused on the external and internal forces of health worker shortages with the goal of preparing health leaders to develop effective policies to manage the shortage globally, nationally, and regionally. The forum was the only event in 2006 to which all chief medical officers (CMO) and chief nursing officers (CNO) in health departments and ministries from around the world were invited to participate.

Conference: What's Indian about HIV/AIDS in India?
Participants at this multidisciplinary conference discussed how economics, culture, and systems of representation have converged to shape the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India. The goal of the conference was to explore comprehensive, context-sensitive responses to public health threats through discussion on the "Indian-ness" of HIV/AIDS. It featured leading scholars in public health and communications as well as practitioners from organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the United Nations Development Programme.

For more information on initiatives and for updates on future additions, visit www.globalhealth.emory.edu

International Impact
While the term "global health" includes health conditions that occur within the United States, the Institute's focus is international. It has chosen to place a special emphasis on the health of populations living in developing countries where health problems are abundant and health care resources scarce.

The purpose of supporting global health activities is to improve the health of people around the world, which could have a positive influence on international relations. "Public health projects in which you share experience, knowledge, and improve outcomes are great opportunities for bonding, uniting, and building good will," argues Koplan. "When you share a common purpose and people are healthier as a result, that brings you closer to people who perceived you to be different before the project began."

Koplan believes that working with partners in other countries is a two-way street, and that Emory will get as much as it gives by working with its global partners. "We hope that the countries and institutions we work with will feel good about our work and want to work with us again. We hope they think we are good partners and collaborators and that we are respectful of their needs and the value they bring to us," he said.

Koplan is equally interested in being a good partner with other internationally-focused entities at Emory. "We're eager to promote collaborations across the University and look for opportunities to coordinate activities and undertake joint initiatives," he said.

President Wagner agrees: "We expect the Institute to draw from and contribute to all of our international activities. 'Internationalization' is one of the four underlying themes in Emory's strategy. It encourages us in all of our educational, research, and outreach activities to consider international possibilities and ramifications of our actions. The Emory Global Health Institute, the Office of International Affairs, the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing, Journeys of Reconciliation, the Emory-Tibet Partnership, The Halle Institute, and many others direct us explicitly to international opportunities and issues."

Rebecca Baggett is the communications and program manager of the Emory Global Health Institute.