LAUNCHing global health leaders: A former Fellow’s perspective
March/ April 2023 | Volume 22 Number 2
Photo courtesy of Satish GopalDr. Satish Gopal is director of the Center for Global Health at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and a former Fogarty Global Health Fellow (2012-2013).
While the program was not called LAUNCH when I began my Fogarty global health fellowship in 2012, the new name is unmistakably appropriate. Indeed, the program has effectively LAUNCHED the careers of countless global health luminaries worldwide who have made and will make seminal contributions to global public health.
In 2012, the statement “I want to be an oncologist and NIH-supported physician-scientist living and working in Africa” was not easily understood at most cancer centers in the U.S. When I was able to add that I had received some initial NIH funding for this endeavor, thanks to Fogarty and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as one of the very first Fogarty Global Health Fellows working on cancer, people started to listen. The opportunity created by my fellowship essentially catalyzed the creation of a new faculty position for me for which there was no institutional precedent. Institutions tend to notice when NIH is interested and investing, and Fogarty’s LAUNCH program has been a critical vehicle for concretely demonstrating NIH’s interest and investment in global health.
Even after this, and like many of us with global health interests, I often felt adrift during my early career in a largely U.S.-oriented biomedical research enterprise. It is very easy to wonder if such career aspirations are even possible or worthy of pursuit and if a more conventional path is the only way. Connection to the worldwide community of Fogarty supported fellows and investigators is a fantastic antidote to this isolation and can be galvanizing for many of us who may not have a robust global health community available to us locally.
However, what I consider one of the fellowship’s most important benefits is the access to role models and mentors. Many household names in global health research had come through Fogarty programs before leading the way to foundational discoveries or paradigm-shifting research and this provided me and others with clear role models we could emulate. It is difficult to envision a path you haven’t seen, and LAUNCH made certain that I could always see a path before me.
Photo courtesy of Satish GopalDr. Satish Gopal (center) with UNC-Project Cancer Program staff Tamiwe Tomoka (at microscope) and Edwards Kasonkanji (standing). "In 2012, the statement 'I want to be an oncologist and NIH-supported physician-scientist living and working in Africa” was not easily understood at most cancer centers in the U.S.'"
Since my Fogarty fellowship, I have been fortunate to receive subsequent grants from Fogarty and NCI that allowed me to stay in Malawi and build local capacity while investigating questions of local importance alongside Malawian colleagues and collaborators. I have been fortunate to recruit and mentor subsequent Malawian and U.S. fellows from many disciplines to join and add to our program while initiating their global health careers. I have been fortunate to have excellent partners like the Ministry of Health, which built a new National Cancer Center adjacent to our cancer research program to ensure that care and research activities were optimally aligned and integrated. Finally, I was fortunate to be recruited to NCI in 2020 to direct its Center for Global Health, where we seek to leverage our immense NCI resources and capabilities as the largest funder of cancer research in the world to help address cancer as the urgent global public health problem that it is.
In sum, my participation in LAUNCH provided the seed investment, support system, and destination guide that made my career possible, as it has done for so many.
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Updated April 6, 2023
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