UNC research projects funded in Vietnam, Siberia, Nicaragua
The School of Public Health’s Office of Global Health has awarded three grants totaling $40,000 to faculty members in public health, anthropology and medicine.

The awards are funded by the Fogarty International Center – the international component of the National Institutes of Health – and the UNC Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development.

The three awardees and their research topics are:

  • Trude Bennett, Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, “Methods, Strategies and Ethics on Prenatal Genetic Screening in Vietnam”
  •  Mark Sorenson, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, “A proposal to examine the relationships between economic status and psychosocial stress and risk markers for metabolic syndrome in Siberia” 
  • Susan Hogan, Assistant Professor, Medicine and Doug Morgan, Associate Professor, Medicine, “Collaborative Chronic Disease Initiatives in Nicaragua: Toward a Better Understanding of Digestive, Kidney and Diabetic Diseases”

Bennett traveled to Vietnam in April to begin discussion with her collaborators.

“The trip was extremely beneficial in strengthening existing partnerships, developing new relationships, and creating linkages for monitoring and prevention of birth defects and disabilities in Vietnam,” Bennett said.

“The agreement reached with Dr. Nguyen Viet Nhan (Chief of the Department of Medical Genetics at Hue College of Medicine and Pharmacy) is especially promising for future collaborative research with significant public health impact. Institutional relations between the UNC School of Public Health and the Hanoi School of Public Health should also gain from these meetings.”

Bennett says she “will continue to work to build relations between UNC and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations in central and southern – as well as northern – Vietnam.”
Dr. Sorenson will investigate the health consequences of changing household subsistence strategies and economic status in six communities in Siberia, Russia. He will collect biological data in collaboration with Dr. Tatiana Klimoya, a cardiovascular epidemiologist at the Institute of Health in Yakutia. 

Drs. Hogan and Morgan will collaborate with colleagues at the University of Nicaragua, Leon to collect pilot data in diabetic, kidney and gastrointestinal diseases to estimate the prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes, as well as determine gastric cancer susceptibility of the population along the Pacific coastal region of Central America. 

The School of Public Health’s Office of Global Health serves as the coordinating unit for the School’s global health activities.

 

For more information about the Office of Global Health, visit www.sph.unc.edu/globalhealth, or contact Gretchen Van Vliet, director, 919-843-7723 or gretchen_vanvliet@unc.edu.

School of Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.

 

 

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