Fall 1999 Issue
CDC Foundation Receives $1 Million for Global Projects
Programs to target worldwide violence prevention, global health
Two grants to the CDC Foundation totaling $1 million will spark involvement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in projects on worldwide violence prevention and student participation in public health abroad.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago awarded $500,000 to the CDC Foundation to fund a training institute and fellowship program to prevent international violence. And the O. C. Hubert Charitable Trust in Atlanta contributed $500,000 to support a program allowing U.S. graduate students in public health, medicine and veterinary medicine to study public health issues in other countries.
“These two projects will foster new learning about important health issues that impact people around the world,” says Charles Stokes, executive director of the CDC Foundation. “They also signify the kind of inventiveness that’s needed to tackle far-reaching health concerns by involving the CDC.”
The MacArthur Foundation grant will allow CDC to work with the World Health Organization to share state-of-the-art methods for monitoring violence-related death and disabilities in communities around the world. The information-sharing will take place under a weeklong International Violent Injury Surveillance Training Institute to be held next year. Experts in violence surveillance from around the world will present information to a group of 25 CDC fellows and representatives of public health departments in the U.S. and abroad.
The CDC Foundation also will establish a fellowship program to gather data on violence in the Americas and Africa, train communities in those areas on violence surveillance and write the first report of its kind on worldwide violence. Scientists at CDC will oversee the CDC Foundation Fellows as they conduct their research.
The $500,000 grant from the O. C. Hubert Charitable Trust will enable the CDC Foundation to make a two-year fellowship program permanent. Under the Hubert Student Fellowships in International Health, medical and veterinary students in the U.S. spend several weeks working on priority health problems in countries around the world.
Last year, seven students traveled to Brazil, Malawi, China, Romania and the Phillippines to see public health issues first-hand. For instance, two fellows traveling to the Philippines established a surveillance program for bat rabies, a life-threatening problem in that nation. Another fellow worked in a hospital in the African nation of Malawi, gaining valuable lab and data collection experience and advancing a long-term CDC project.
In each case, the fellows are paired with mentors from CDC. A second class of Hubert Fellows is working abroad this summer, and with the $500,000 grant from the Hubert Charitable Trust, the CDC Foundation will establish a permanent endowment to support students in the future.