SUMMER 2023

Pandemic Preparedness and Response seed grants

Alison El Ayadi, ScD, MPH, received funding for research aimed at understanding the challenges and coping mechanisms for achieving routine childhood vaccine uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic in Guinea.

Anneka Hooft, MD, MPH, received funding for work aimed at providing Malawians with better access to diagnostic and surveillance systems to target and prevent disease outbreaks.

Charles Langelier, MD, PhD, received funding to leverage the unbiased diagnostic tool of metagenomic sequencing for pneumonia in people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

The IGHS Affiliate Program awarded its annual Early Career Global Health Scientist Awards – recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of global health and acknowledging exceptional achievements in teaching, mentoring, collaboration and scholarly work in global health – to Marissa Boeck, MD, MPH, and Tyler Law, MD.

Congratulations to both!

Boeck researches trauma survivorship, with a core focus on and inclusion of patients and communities. Boeck, who started the viral #ILookLikeASurgeon hashtag to promote gender equity in surgery, champions diversity in the surgical workforce and the potential value of social media in medicine and research.

Law helped create a novel assessment tool for facility-level anesthesia capacity that is being implemented by national anesthesia societies in low- and middle-income countries. He also led a global survey of anesthesia workforce training and practice models to inform efforts to scale up the global anesthesia workforce.

Nadia Diamond-Smith, PhD, MS, received a second grant from the Vaccine Confidence Fund to use a community-engaged process to understand perceptions about childhood vaccination in rural Guatemala. The research will adapt social media content from a previous grant focused on COVID-19 to address all childhood vaccination and to support community health workers in addressing vaccine hesitancy in their communities.

As part of a multi-campus, multi-discipline research team, Nadia Diamond-Smith, PhD, MS, (above) and IGHS alum Lucia Abascal-Miguel, MD, PhD, (left) received funding from the University of California to create a research collaborative that will lead new research and mentoring initiatives at UCSF, UC Santa Cruz and UC Merced exploring how social networks affect the health of Native Americans and Indigenous migrants from Latin America. 

Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski, PhD, MS, and her team received funding in the first round of the California Collaborative for Pandemic Recovery and Readiness Research (CPR³) program for their project, “Digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (dCBT) for Anxiety During Pregnancy: Evaluation and Actioning through HOPE.” The randomized controlled trial will evaluate the efficacy and acceptability of dCBT for reducing anxiety symptoms in pregnant people.

Jelliffe-Pawlowski was also honored in the Forbes 50 over 50 in Innovation for her startup, EGG Health Pregnancy. The startup launched in 2022 and provides pregnant people and new parents with personalized health data. 

Thirty members from various Haitian public health agencies visited UCSF August 7-11 for a 5-day training on government-led HIV quality improvement and management programs. 

“HEALTHQUAL Training for Quality Management Champions” was funded by CDC-Haiti and led by UCSF HEALTHQUAL to illuminate the structure of a government-led responsive and resilient quality management program that embraces the implementation of quality improvement at national and sub-national levels. Presenters included HEALTHQUAL Director Bruce Agins, MD; Starley Shade, PhD; Wayne Steward, PhD; Apollo Basenero, MBChB; Kathleen Clanon, MD; Margareth Jasmin, MD; Joseph Murungu, MBChB; and Adam Thompson.

Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) members are invited to apply for a Dr. Tom Hall Education Grant. Ten grants, each under $5,000, will be offered this year. Projects should improve human and environmental outcomes through education or implementation. You may find more information about this opportunity, including instructions and judging criteria, in their call for proposals. Tom Hall was a global health leader and one of CUGH's greatest supporters. He passed away in 2017, but his legacy of giving lives on through his gift supporting small grants for CUGH members that impact the health and sustainability of our planet. Apply by August 31.  

Maya Jayaram, MS ‘23, writes about factors behind higher rates of non-communicable diseases after capstone research in the Mariana Islands.

Maha Zubaidi, MS ‘23, writes about the impact of crowd control weapons on civilians and medical providers in Palestine.  

IGHS affiliate Salma Dali, MD, shares her perspective on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

Wednesday, Sept. 6, 10 –11 a.m.

Byers Auditorium in Genentech Hall, UCSF Mission Bay

Gallalee will present her dissertation, "Surveillance and response for malaria high-risk populations: tailored approaches to reach persistent pockets of transmission."

• Executive director of the Institute for Global Health Sciences
• GloCal Health fellowship assistant
• Course director, Socio-cultural and Behavioral Determinants of Health
• Course director(s), Global Health Economics

An active and targeted survey reveals asymptomatic malaria infections among high-risk populations in Mondulkiri, Cambodia. Doum D, Mclver DJ, Hustedt J, Hii J, Sovannaroth S, Lek D, Richardson JH, Tatarsky A, Lobo NF. Malar J. Jun 2023. doi: 10.1186/s12936-023-04630-2.

Assessing the acceptability and feasibility of reactive drug administration for malaria elimination in a Plasmodium vivax predominant setting: a qualitative study in two provinces in Thailand. Suwannarong K, Cotter C, Ponlap T, Bubpa N, Thammasutti K, Chaiwan J, Finn TP, Kitchakarn S, Mårtensson A, Baltzell KA, Hsiang MS, Lertpiriyasuwat C, Sudathip P, Bennett A. BMC Public Health. Jul 2023. doi: 10.1186/s12889-023-15852-z.

The association between religiosity and resilience among young trans women. Wang JC, McFarland W, Arayasirikul S, Wilson EC. PLoS One. 2023 Jul 31;18(7):e0263492. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263492.

On our website, find all 19 articles IGHS core faculty have published since June 1.

Huge congratulations to our outstanding MS 2023 graduates! On July 27, 2023, 29 students became IGHS alums! It was an exciting and joyful celebration of and for students.

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@MonicaGandhi9's

keynote address at @IGHSatUCSF

master’s graduation ceremony.

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Congratulations to three of our master’s students: Gabrielle Chan, Sima Naderi and Maha Zubaidi. They were all awarded University of California Global Health Institute (UCGHI) MASS awards!

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