Research and Training Programs

Recent studies indicate that individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD) are susceptible to the dev

Anemia, defined by low hemoglobin content in the blood, is common in pregnancy, impairing the health of the mother as well as babies. Although the condition can easily be treated with currently available supplements or infusions, anemia is detected too late or not at all.

In collaboration, the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) in Mozambique and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) have partnered to will establish the Vanderbilt-Mozambique Biomedical Informatics (VM-BMI) training and research program, the first of its kind in Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) African countries, with a specific focus on HIV. BMI uses computational and information sciences approaches primarily in biology and human health. VM-BMI will have several components.

Building on the success of a pilot program training traditional healers to initiate HIV counseling and testing, the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health and the University of Witwatersrand have partnered to expand healer-initiated HIV testing and linkage to care in South Africa.The study team will conduct a cluster, randomized, controlled trial comparing healer-initiated HIV counseling and testing to the standard of care in rural South Africa by utilizing an existing and trusted resource — traditional healers.

Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) and collaborators Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) and Bayero University (BUK) have partnered to establish the Vanderbilt-Nigeria Research Ethics Training Program (V-NET). The program is a comprehensive initiative that encompasses curricular development, didactic coursework, skills development, mentoring, and practicum experiences designed to build capacity for the ethical design, conduct, and oversight of genetic and genomic research in Nigeria.

The Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH), Hanoi Medical University (HMU), and the Vietnam National Cancer Institute (VNCI) have partnered on a new training program from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health. The Vanderbilt-Vietnam Genetic Epidemiology Training Program (V2- GENE) is an initiative to train scholars in the genetic epidemiology of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). 

The Pediatric Anesthesia Training in Africa (PATA) program aims to improve perioperative care for children by building education capacity for pediatric anesthesia training at teaching hospitals across the continent. The primary objective of PATA is to support the development of five new pediatric anesthesia fellowship programs in five African countries. Currently, PATA supports fellowships in Nigeria, Zambia, and Uganda. 

In partnership with the University of Zambia (UNZA) and the Zambia Cancer Diseases Hospital (CDH), the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health, the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center received $1.3 million for a five-year training grant funded by the National Cancer Institute to support cancer epidemiology research in Zambia.

Fellowship applications are open for this NIH collaborative research training grant focused on creating a cohort of highly skilled Nigerian biostatisticians with the capacity to lead and supervise high-level biostatistics activities for HIV research studies in West Africa.Focus includes hands-on biostatistics training. Trainees will take biostatistics courses, become members of a team of biostatisticians doing HIV research at Vanderbilt, and will be assigned to HIV research projects using data from Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH).

In 2020, the SPRING research team completed a multicenter phase III randomized controlled trial fo

The University of Liberia College of Health Sciences is the leading educational institution for developing Liberia’s clinicians, researchers, health policymakers and innovators.

Young people living with HIV (Y-PLWH) have poor adherence to antiretroviral therapy and engagement in HIV care, making HIV the leading cause of death for African adolescents. Depression and psychological distress are much more common among Y-PLWH than in the general population, and are associated with significantly worse adherence to care and treatment when compared to Y-PLWH without these co-morbid conditions. Thus, untreated depression and severe psychological distress are important contributors to poor HIV outcomes in this population.

Principal Investigator(s): Timothy R. Sterling, M.D. Valeria Cavalcanti Rolla, M.D., Ph.D.

Principal Investigator(s):  Muktar Aliyu, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.P.H. William Wester, M.D., M.P.H.

Principal Investigators: Timothy Sterling, MD Bruno Andrade Thomas Hawn

The West African Ebola outbreak of 2014-2015 exposed the fragility of Sierra Leone’s health system and highlighted the need for further investments to ensure its future capability of responding to a disease outbreak of this magnitude.

Principal Investigator: Edwin Trevathan, MD, MPH

Status epilepticus (SE) is the most common serious neurological emergency among children worldwide. In the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) of sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of childhood SE-associated mortality and morbidity appears to be especially high. However, the phenotypes of childhood SE, clinical predictors of SE-associated mortality and of SE-associated neurodevelopmental morbidity, and genomic predictors of SE, SE-associated mortality and neurodevelopmental morbidity have not been well-characterized in this region.

About V-RAMP 

The UNZA-Vanderbilt Training Partnership for HIV-Nutrition-Metabolic Research (UVP-1) and the UNZA-Vanderbilt Partnership for HIV-NCD Research (UVP-2) continue a longstanding training collaboration between the University of Zambia School of Medicine/University Teaching Hospital (UNZA/UTH), Vanderbilt University (VU) and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH).

The scale-up of global antiretroviral therapy (ART) represents an unparalleled global health success story, leading to impressive overall reductions in HIV-related morbidity and mortality. However, adolescents and young adults (AYA), especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, have largely been left out of this story. While AIDS-related deaths declined by 30% for adults from 2005-2012, they increased by 50% among AYA over the same period, making AIDS the leading cause of death among African youth. AYA living with HIV perform poorly across the entire care continuum.

The Vanderbilt-Nigeria Building Research Capacity in HIV/Non-communicable Diseases (V-BRCH) Program builds capacity of Nigerian investigators to successfully initiate and implement high-quality clinical trials in HIV-associated non-communicable diseases.