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.

Every year since 2000, the VUMC Academic Enterprise has honored faculty members for Excellence in Teaching and Outstanding Contributions to Research. Recipients were nominated by their faculty colleagues and chosen by the 2016 VUMC Academic Enterprise Faculty Awards Selection Committees.This year both Douglas C. Heimburger, M.D., M.S. and D. Troy Moon, M.D., M.P.H.received the Jacek Hawiger Award for Teaching Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows in the Classroom, Lecture or Small Group Setting.

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