Research and Training Programs

In collaboration, the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) in Mozambique and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) have partnered to 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.

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

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 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.