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ELLISON MEDICAL FOUNDATION COMMITS $810,000 TO GLOBAL HEALTH CENTER AT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
With a new gift from the Ellison Medical Foundation of Bethesda, Md., the University of Virginia will expand its efforts to combat diseases afflicting the developing world. The grant for U.Va.’s Center for Global Health will support student and faculty research on health threats arising in impoverished countries, and it will enable the center to bring in scientists and clinicians from abroad to help develop strategies to alleviate these problems. The Ellison Medical Foundation award offers an initial commitment of $810,000 for three years, with an option to renew for an additional two years upon demonstration of progress, bringing the overall total to $1.5 million.
“By advancing the Center for Global Health, the Ellison Medical Foundation’s generous support will promote multidisciplinary education and research aimed at improving the human condition,” said University President John T. Casteen III. “We are especially grateful that this gift helps us achieve one of the most important goals that emerged from our Virginia 2020 planning, which is to increase the University’s international impact.”
Health problems in the developing world affect all of us, noted Dr. Richard Guerrant, director of the Center for Global Health. In addition to causing widespread human suffering, these diseases contribute to political instability and economic stagnation and help to sustain the poverty that gives rise to them.
The Ellison Medical Foundation’s three-year grant, for which the University will provide matching support, promotes the international exchange of expertise on these issues. While funding the work of students and faculty going abroad and visiting scholars coming to the University, the gift also will support the development of interdisciplinary courses and an annual symposium on international health.
“In today’s global society, all of the world’s citizens ultimately share the same disease and health threats and their costs,” said Guerrant, who was recently named to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. “With this gift, we will engage experts and students across all disciplines in building sustained collaborations at top universities around the world to ameliorate the diseases of poverty.”
“The U.S. will benefit from the development of future leaders with a real sense of the international community and an understanding of the difficult issues faced by developing countries,” said Dr. Stephanie James, Deputy Director of the foundation. “The Ellison Medical Foundation’s Global Infectious Disease program is pleased to support U.Va.’s new Center for Global Health in its effort to provide that type of learning opportunity.”
Drawing applicants from programs across the University, including medicine, nursing, the humanities, law, engineering and education, the Center for Global Health sponsors as many as 30 student research projects each year. Recent examples include work by a third-year undergraduate who traveled to Ghana to study links between malnutrition and resistant strains of the AIDS virus. In Mexico, a U.Va. computer science student helped to design a computer system for collecting data on water quality and contamination and later founded a University organization called Engineering Students Without Borders.
“Through the Center for Global Health, we create a model of partnerships with students and colleagues across the University to serve the international community,” said Dr. Arthur Garson Jr., vice president and dean of U.Va.’s School of Medicine. “These projects broaden our outlook and our engagement with the world, and they produce results that touch millions of lives.”
Breyette Lorntz, associate director for the Center for Global Health, works with schools and departments throughout the University to develop undergraduate and graduate courses on global health. “They offer University students opportunities to address international health issues in exciting, tangible ways,” Lorntz said. She and Guerrant also are working with colleagues to develop an international track in U.Va.’s new master of public health degree program.
Established by Lawrence J. Ellison, the Ellison Medical Foundation fosters research in global infectious disease and aging. The foundation particularly targets creative scholarship that might not be funded by traditional sources of research support.
March 18, 2004