Emory University‘s Global Health Institute has received a $6 million grant to help four poor countries develop their national public health institutes.
The three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is expected to result in a model that can be used on later assistance projects. The countries to benefit from the grant will be named later this year, according to an Emory news release.
The International Association of National Public Health Institutes, which has worked on projects to improve 10 national public health institutes since 2006, is based at Emory and Finland‘s National Institute of Public Health and Welfare.
The association is a network of leaders from 80 national public health institutes around the world. Through the grant, it will partner with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to develop the model for improving capacity in poorer countries.
Jeffrey Koplan, president of the association, vice president for global health at Emory, and principal investigator for the new grant, said sharing knowledge among countries benefits all. In an interconnected world, disease can spread quickly with far-reaching consequences, he said in the release.
Visit http://www.ianphi.org/ for more information about the association and http://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/dphswd/ for more on the CDC.
