Fogarty funds new non-communicable disease programs

September / October 2011 | Volume 10, Issue 5

Fogarty has awarded $14.4 million to 14 research institutions to reduce the impact of the ongoing global epidemic of non-communicable diseases in developing countries. The five-year Chronic, Non-Communicable Diseases and Disorders Across the Lifespan (NCD-Lifespan) grants will help to build the ranks of experienced clinicians and researchers by establishing research training programs in more than a dozen low-and middle-income countries. (View a full list of awards below.)

“Chronic diseases and disorders are now the leading cause of death worldwide, and are hitting low-resource populations the hardest,” said Fogarty Director Dr. Roger I. Glass. “These grants will go a long way toward building public health infrastructure and human capacity in countries that are struggling to combat a lack of formally trained personnel who can deal with these conditions.”

A wide range of curricula and training will be developed by the NCD-Lifespan grantees, including a cancer epidemiology certificate program for Moroccan health workers, cardiovascular-related education tracks in both health service and patient-oriented research for students in Ghana, biostatistics and mentoring curricula for Nigerian trainees, interdisciplinary training in substance dependence for investigators in Thailand, workshops and summer institutes for Thai dental students, one-to-one mentoring and peer-oriented training exercises for suicide researchers in China and long-term training in behavioral conditions and the social determinants of illness for mental health trainees in India.

Non-communicable diseases currently exact a huge toll on populations across the globe. According to the World Health Organization, 63 percent of deaths in 2008 were primarily a result of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases. The worldwide rise in deaths from these diseases is projected to continue, with the greatest increase expected in low-and middle-income regions. Fogarty recently launched the NCD-Lifespan program to address these diseases as well as mental illness and depression, neurological disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, developmental disorders and other conditions.

NIH funding partners for the awards include the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

More Information

• Learn more about the Chronic, Non-communicable Diseases and Disorders Across the Lifespan program.
• Learn more about Chronic, Non-communicable Diseases.

NCD-Lifespan Awards

Access full details for the NCD-Lifespan awards in NIH RePORTER.

Full Awards

• Strengthening Indian NCD Clinical Research and Training capacity
  Florida International University, $1,182,280
• Research Training in Cancer Prevention and Control in Morocco
  H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, Florida, $1,167,470
• Building Research Capacity to Improve Mental Health in China across the Lifespan
  Harvard Medical School, $1,151,771
• NYU/UG Cardiovascular Research Training Institute Program (Ghana)
  New York University School of Medicine, $1,177,654
• Research Training: Socio-Economics of Mental Health Service Delivery in South Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Moldova, Romania, Serbia)
  University of California, Berkeley, $1,134,452
• Training Program in Nigeria for NCD Research
  University of Maryland, Baltimore, $1,133, 898
• Nutrition-Related NCD Prevention Training in China
  University of North Carolina at Chapel, Hill, $1,142, 731
• SHARE India University Pittsburgh Population and Intervention Research Training
  University of Pittsburgh, $965,385
• China-Rochester Suicide Research Training Program (CRSRT)
  University of Rochester, $$1,123,960
• Clinical, Public Health & Behavioral Oral Health Research Training for Thailand
  University of Washington, $1,137,106
• INDO - US Training Program in Behavioral Health Across the Lifespan
  University of Florida, $1,144,102
• Drug Dependence through the Lifespan: US-Thai Training Program
  Yale University, $1,149, 113

Two-year Planning Grants

• Planning Grant for Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases and Disorders Across the Lifespan
  Praboromarajchanok Institute in Thailand
• Novel Strategies for Stroke Rehabilitation (Planning Grant)
  Fundacao Faculdade de Medicina in Brazil

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