Uganda faces problems of rapid population growth with minimal evidence of fertility decline and only modest increases in modern contraceptive use. There are high rates of STIs and cervical cancer, as well as a mature, generalized HIV epidemic. Thus, population and reproductive health problems are a priority. Since 1987, the Makerere University, Institute of Public Health (MUIPH), Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities (JHU) have collaborated to address these problems via the Rakai Health Sciences Program (RHSP), a multidisciplinary research and service program in rural southwesternUganda. Training is funded by two Fogarty grants, including an International Training and Research in Population and Health (for which this application is a competing renewal), as well as foundation grants. This program has cumulatively trained 3 doctoral, 13 masters, 35 short-term and 10 post-doctoraltrainees at JHU, as well as bachelor and certificate trainees in Uganda. All graduates have returned to Uganda.Our goal is to train Ugandan scientists in disciplines relevant to population and reproductive health, including epidemiology, demography, behavioral and social sciences, clinical and basic sciences. MUIPH has developed an innovative MPH program and established faculty appointments for Junior Lecturers who can concurrently pursue a PhD degree (JL/PhD). This reduces costs relative to US training, and provides trainees with a career structure. MUIPH and JHU have established a "sandwich" PhD program whereby doctoral candidates at MUIPH gain credit for advanced courses at JHU while pursuing a JL/PhD. Based on the prior capacity building at MUIPH and the JL/PhD mechanism, the present proposal plans to train two "sandwich" JL/PhDs at MUIPH and JHU, 3 Masters students and 10 postdoctoral Fellows at JHU, and 5 Masters and 3 Batchelor-level trainees at MU. Short-term non-degree training will be provided in both the US and Uganda. In addition, we propose curriculum development in population and reproductive health at MUIPH via a "south-to-south" collaboration with four West African universities which have received Gates Institute support for curriculum development.. We will also conduct workshops for Ugandan Fogarty recipients. The Program will be coordinated with other JHU training programs to facilitate cost-sharing, and will be jointly supervised by Dr. David Serwadda (Director MUIPH) and Dr. Ronald Gray PI (Robertson Professor of Reproductive Epidemiology, JHU).
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter