Three UAB Students Chosen as Fogarty International Clinical Scholars in Global Health

Three University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) graduate students have been selected for the prestigious Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars program. They join top students and post-doctoral trainees from across the United States and 19 other nations who will train for global health research in low- and middle-income areas of the world.

   June 23, 2010

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Three University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) graduate students have been selected for the prestigious Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars program. They join top students and post-doctoral trainees from across the United States and 19 other nations who will train for global health research in low- and middle-income areas of the world.

The program's support center is located at the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Funding is from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) John E. Fogarty International Center.

The scholars from UAB are Derek Johnson and Renicha "Nish" McCree-Hale, doctoral candidates in the UAB School of Public Health, and Natasha Varma, a doctoral dental medicine candidate in the UAB School of Dentistry. They will join other scholars and fellows for an orientation July 7-20 at the NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Md., before departing later in July to begin their year-long training.

Johnson, of Bolton, Mass., was selected to pursue his Fogarty fellowship at UNC  Project-Malawi in Lilongwe, Malawi. He will work under the mentorship of Charles van der Horst, M.D., William C. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., and Mina Hosseinipour M.D., all faculty members of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hosseinipour is the clinical director of UNC Project-Malawi, a long-term research, training and care partnership with the Malawi Ministry of Health. Johnson's UAB School of Public Health faculty mentors are Mirjam C. Kempf, Ph.D. and Sadeep Shrestha, Ph.D.

McCree-Hale, of Citronelle, was selected to pursue her fellowship at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. She will work under the mentorship of Wafaie Fawzi, M.D., Dr.P.H., a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Japhet Killewo, M.B.Ch.B., Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology at Muhimbili University. McCree-Hale's UAB School of Public Health faculty mentors are Diane Grimley, Ph.D., and Pauline Jolly, Ph.D., and her UAB Division of Preventive Medicine faculty mentor is Nedra Lisovicz, Ph.D.

Varma, of Mobile, was selected to pursue her Fogarty fellowship at the Public Health Foundation of India in New Delhi. She will work under the mentorship of Dorairaj Prabhakaran M.D., D.M., M.Sc., and Nikhil Tandon, M.D., both faculty members of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India. She will also work under the mentorship of K.M. Venkat Narayan, M.D., M.Sc., M.B.A., and Mohammed K. Ali, M.B.Ch.B., M.Sc., both faculty members at Emory University in Atlanta. Varma's UAB School of Dentistry faculty mentor is Mary MacDougall, Ph.D.

Under the program, Fogarty scholars are paired with foreign counterparts in order to conduct clinical research abroad under the tutelage of NIH-funded university faculty or other research institutions working on infectious or chronic diseases. Among the fields of study are AIDS care and related opportunistic infections; chronic and sexually transmitted diseases; malaria; substance abuse and mental health; cancer; diseases of the heart, lungs and blood; neurology; ophthalmology; dentistry and dietary care.

This year, a total of 107 Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars will begin training at 38 sites in 22 nations around the globe. To learn more about these programs, click here.

About the John E. Fogarty International Center

The John E. Fogarty International Center, the international component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), addresses global health challenges through innovative and collaborative research and training programs, and supports and advances the NIH mission through international partnerships.

About UAB

Known for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is the state of Alabama's largest employer and an internationally renowned research university and academic health center whose professional schools and specialty patient care programs are consistently ranked as among the nation's top 50; find more information at www.uab.edu and www.uabmedicine.org.