The Latest News from VIGH

Since July, investigators in the Vanderbilt Tuberculosis Center have been awarded research grants totaling $5 million. The center’s outlook is global, with a focus on performing epidemiological and clinical studies to improve tuberculosis (TB) treatment and prevention.

"The health counselor is the key member of the team. They are the true pillar. It is with the health counselor that patients have their first contact, on which everything else depends." ~Mauro Timana – Chefe Médico at Mocubela

Chronic Consequences of Global Infectious Diseases January 22-24, 2017 Nashville, Tennessee

Tânia now dreams of one day becoming a nurse. "Next year, I'm going back to school because when I grow up I want to be a nurse to help other people." -Tânia

You are invited to join the Tennessee AETC for the 19th Annual HIV Symposium: Reducing the Risks! 

Growing up in the small rural village of Yetebon, Ethiopia, Kidane Amare Sarko could step just outside his thatched-roof, mud and wood hut and see his future. He could see his father, who could neither read nor write, work in the field as a farmer. As the eldest boy in a family of seven children, Sarko fetched water, collected firewood and looked after the cows. Though he desired a different life for himself, it was difficult to imagine one.

Join a team of U.S. and Zambian trainees, and faculty mentors in a 18-month fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee and Zambia. This postdoctoral fellowship is a two part program that includes 12 months of diagnostic development at Vanderbilt University, followed by 6 months of mentored field testing and product development with partner organizations in Zambia.

Amélia Sebastião and her seven year old daughter, Juliana, are healthy and making long-term plans for their lives. Amélia is a Peer Educator assisting patients in her community and Juliana wants to be a District Administrator when she grows up. But this was not the case just a few years ago.

A medical team delivered a baby via cesarean section in South Sudan one night in a room lit by flashlights and cellphones. The woman lived and so did her baby. If it hadn't been for a registered nurse trained to administer anesthesia the woman might have become one more mortality statistic on a continent where needing a c-section can mean death. While women in East Africa have access to hospitals, anesthesiologists are few and far between.

Workshop presenters and organizers

“Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you live,” is a quotation often heard in global health circles, often espoused by the Irish rock star, Bono and his ONE Campaign. But the mantra is especially poignant in countries such as El Salvador.

View photos from the 2016 Public Health Practicum Colloquium. 

In the 2016 Global Health Case Competition, teams proposed solutions to strengthen the health system in Liberia after the Ebola outbreak. The Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health’s Student Advisory Council hosted its sixth annual Global Health Case Competition from February 7-13, 2016. This year, the Student Advisory Council organized several experts from the field to give presentations on health systems strengthening (HSS) and act as judges for the competition.

2016 Meeting Dates Global Cancer: April 4, 6:30 p.m. Hosted by Drs. Sten Vermund and Douglas Morgan, and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health Global Pathology: June 13, 2016, 6:30 p.m. Hosted by Dr. Quentin Eichbaum and the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology Ethics in International Collaboration: October 3, 2015, 6:30 p.m. Hosted by Dr. Elizabeth Heitman and the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society

Since returning to the United States from a three-month stint working in rural Guatemala, I’ve been thinking about how messy and random global health delivery—even when it’s really effective—can be. Specifically, I’ve been struck by the central role that luck or serendipity plays in achieving positive health outcomes. I’m talking about that moment when a patient walks out of the clinic and you sit back and think about all of the stars that had to align in order for that patient to get the care she needs.