Dr. Kilmarx, Acting Director, presiding, the FIC Advisory Board met in building 16 on the NIH Campus in Bethesda Maryland and via videoconference on February 6, 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. EDT for closed session, and on February 7, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. for open session.
Present
- Peter Kilmarx, M.D., Chair, Acting Director, FIC
- Otis Brawley, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
- Wondwossen Gebreyes, M.D., Ohio State University
- Gregory Germino, M.D., National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH (Ex Officio)
- Chandy John, M.D., Indiana University School of Medicine
- Vikas Kapil, D.O., M.P.H., Center for Global Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Ex Officio)
- Jennifer Kates, M.D., Kaiser Family Foundation
- Robert Murphy, M.D., Northwestern University
Also Present
- Kristen Weymouth, Executive Secretary, FIC
- Clement Adebamowo, Ph.D., University of Maryland School of Medicine
- Nalini Anand, J.D., M.P.H., FIC
- Geetha Bansal, Ph.D., Program Officer, Director, Division of International Training and Research (DITR)
- Monica Bertagnolli, Ph.D., NIH Director
- Echezona "Eche" Ezeanolue, Ph.D. IVAN Research Institute, University of Nigeria
- Atul Gawande, Ph.D., United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
- Adnan Hyder, Ph.D., George Washington University
- Flora Katz, Ph.D., DITR, FIC
- Andrey Kuzmichev, Ph.D., FIC
- Jeanne Marrazzo, Ph.D., National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID)
- John Monahan, Ph.D., Georgetown University
- Paul Ndebele, Ph.D., George Washington University
- Barbara Sina, Ph.D., FIC
- David Spiro, Ph.D., FIC
- Rachel Sturke, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.I.A., FIC
- Susan Vorkoper, FIC
- Makeda Williams, Ph.D., National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
- Celia Wolfman, FIC
Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, NIH Director, Welcome and Introduction
Dr. Peter Kilmarx brought the open meeting to order and introduced Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, the new NIH Director. Dr. Bertagnolli discussed her background with the Board; she grew up in rural Wyoming and spent most of her career as a surgical oncologist and researcher in Boston. Dr. Bertagnolli joined the NIH as the NCI director the previous year before being appointed as NIH Director. Dr. Bertagnolli discussed the need for NIH to provide more support to NIH supported post-docs, updating the Board that the Director's Working Group on Re-Envisioning NIH Supported Post-Doctoral Training had made several recommendations. These included: dramatically increasing pay and benefits for all NCI supported post-docs; creating and expanding mechanisms to support the full pool of post-docs; facilitating their transitions into their next career stage whether it's in an academic world or beyond; promoting training and professional development of post-docs and their mentors; supporting safe and diverse perspectives in research environments; and improving the means to assess and track post-docs' career projections.
NIH still does not have a budget for 2024. Dr. Bertagnolli said that in her opinion the best NIH can hope for is a flat budget, which in many ways is a budget cut. NIH is in a time of a contracting budget, which tends to disproportionately affect new investigators, and NIH risks losing a generation of researchers. NIH has difficult decisions to make in the coming 1-2 years over what projects, ideas, and topics to pursue and which to leave on the table. To try to counteract this loss of ideas NIH is focusing on partnerships in all areas, including other countries, societies, and government agencies, with both industry and academic partners. A main concern for NIH is the declining health of the U.S. population. U.S. life expectancy is low compared to its comparator nations, and this is not a pandemic era issue, as it started to decline several years before. The U.S. spends more on health care than any other nation in the world, yet comparator nations spend less and have longer life expectancies. According to a National Academies 2021 report the decline in life expectancy appears to be largely related to an increase in mortality among working aged adults and the main drivers are an increase in deaths related to drug poisoning, alcohol related causes, suicides, and a slowing of progress in reducing deaths due to cardio metabolic diseases and obesity. Dr. Bertagnolli explained that every indicator NIH has says that these conditions are much worse now than they were 3 years ago when the report was authored.
Dr. Bertagnolli presented some guiding principles for the NIH, the first being that their work is not finished when they deliver scientific discoveries; their work is only finished when all people are living long and healthy lives. The next principle is that NIH research encompasses the laboratory, the clinic, and the community. NIH has to be more effective in connecting what it learns with everyday life and clinical practice so that all people live longer and healthier lives. NIH has to ensure its clinical research is robust and comprehensive, meaning all human studies are more efficient, more inclusive, and truly responsive to the actual needs of people. The last principle is that progress is accelerated when advanced scientific methods, such as new data analytics, are applied to data that includes everyone, and when new discoveries are rapidly and equitably adopted in clinical care. Dr. Bertagnolli then discussed NIH's strategy to accomplish these principles. To deal with NIH's most pressing issues they start with primary care research, allowing NIH to engage care providers and patients on the front lines of health in developing ways to overcome challenges of metabolic disorders, mental health, substance abuse, and true disease prevention. The NIH plans to achieve this by: meeting people where they already receive care to better engage underrepresented communities in research; increasing research capabilities and efficiency with innovative study designs that address common health issues, prevention, and implementation relevant to individual communities; using EHR to respectfully engage people in research with their permission; and rapidly disseminating evidence to guide patient and provider decisions. The strategy also focuses on expanding biomedical research data use to inform new research and improve health outcomes. The strategy to accomplishing this includes integrating data from basic and social science research, public health, clinical care, and employing a federated architecture for data sharing and use. The strategy also involves increasing capacity for data hosting by enabling low-cost access to data using open-industry data standards and supporting broad access to advanced analytics and computational power, as well as providing education and workforce development.
Dr. Bertagnolli reminded the Board of the recommendations on how to address the decline in the health of the U.S. population, which come from the 2013 National Academies Report on the U.S. Health Disadvantage. The first is that NIH and others at HHS join with an international partner to improve the quality and consistency of data available for cross-national comparisons. Partners should also standardize indicators and data collection methods. The second recommendation is that NIH and other agencies should support the development of more refined analytic methods and study designs to better elucidate the complex causal pathways that might explain cross-national differences in health. Dr. Bertagnolli informed the Board that NIH is now working with partners at HHS to fulfill these recommendations. The National Library of Medicine is going to be the focal point for the data universe and NIH will be the focal point for the new outreach and
clinical research network but will not be alone in gathering data from all corners of the U.S. government. Dr. Wondwossen asked how Dr. Bertagnolli sees NIH's role in the future as part of the one health dimension and as a global leader. Dr. Bertagnolli explained that she sees the NIH filling gaps such as making sure treatments and cures, like those for sickle cell, are available to everyone that needs them. The NIH can do this by using more fundamental science to make the cure easier, simpler, less costly to produce, and better distributed. The NIH also needs to continue to interact with communities and make care more individualized through partnerships that provide resources to help achieve those goals.
Acting Director's Update and Discussion of Current and Planned FIC Activities
Dr. Peter Kilmarx reviewed the agenda for the day and introduced Dr. Flora Katz to give a global update on the NIH-Wide Climate Change and Health Initiative. Dr. Katz informed the Board that the initiative expanded its Executive Committee from 7 to 11 IC Directors and has 170 members in its working group from 21 ICOs. NIH awarded its first 5 exploratory grants for Climate Change and Health Research Centers at the end of September 2023, 3 of which are global: Drexel University, Tufts University, and UC San Diego. NIH also awarded a grant to a Research Coordinating Center at Boston University in partnership with the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, which held its First Annual Climate & Health Conference on February 5-7, 2024. NIH received another tranche of applications for the second round of P20 Planning Grants, which will be awarded at the end of the fiscal year, and Dr. Katz will inform the Board on them at a later date.
Dr. Kilmarx remembered Mr. Robert Eiss, who passed away in October 2023; Mr. Eiss joined FIC in 1993 as a Division of International Relations Program Officer, left in 2000, returned in 2007 as Senior Advisor to FIC and NIH Directors, and played a key role in innumerable global partnerships. Dr. Kilmarx then updated the Board on recent activities of the FIC. The Chinese Academy of Sciences visited FIC on September 19, 2023; it's the largest scientific organization in China, with 100+ institutes and 60,000+ researchers. The delegation was led by Dr. Yaping Zhang and discussed enhancing CAS-NIH collaborations. NIH supports 700+ collaborations with China and approximately 40 with CAS. NIH and CAS have had an MOU since 1983, and it is now part of the State Department's negotiations with China on renewing a bilateral science and technology agreement. FIC was also visited by the Cuban Academy of Sciences in October, led by Dr. Velázquez Pérez, and they had meetings with FIC, NIAID, NIDA, NIMHD, NCI, NINDS, NIA, NIMH, NIAAA, and IC international representatives. Dr. Kilmarx served as the NIH's representative at the Grand Challenges Meeting in Dakar in October, which is a forum for information sharing and partnership development. During the meeting the Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map 2023 was launched, sponsored by BMGF and NIH. While in Dakar Dr. Kilmarx met with FIC and NIH grantees at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop. At the Institut Pasteur Dakar Dr. Kilmarx met with the Director, Dr. Amadou Sall and toured their impressive new facilities with automated large-scale attenuated viral vaccine manufacturing and automated mRNA vaccine production. Dr. Kilmarx also represented the NIH at the Pitt Public Health 75th Anniversary meeting and the Dartmouth Center for Global Health Equity 10th Anniversary meeting in October 2023.
In November 2023 Dr. Kilmarx attended the Data Science and Innovation Africa meeting in Kigali, an NIH Common Fund DS-I Africa program leveraging data science technologies to develop solutions to Africa’s most pressing public health problems. It consists of five components: an open data science platform; a coordinating center; research hubs; research training programs; and research into ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI). The program has 38 awardees, mostly African institutions, from 8 NIH ICs, and this was their 3rd annual meeting with 300+ attendees from 40+ countries. Dr. Kilmarx also met with FIC and NIH grantees as well as with the University of Global Health Equity while he was in Rwanda. Also in November, Dr. Kilmarx attended the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases meeting in Singapore; met with Thailand grantees in Bangkok; and travelled to Geneva for the WHO Consultation on Clinical Trials.
Ms. Susan Vorkoper updated the Board on the Division of International Science Policy, Planning and Evaluation (DISPPE). Building on the Childhood Obesity Prevention Across Borders workshop held in 2019, DISPPE supported a group of small awards creating new research partnerships between U.S. and Latin American investigators to address childhood obesity prevention. As these awards wrap up DISPPE is seeing exciting positive outcomes including successful research applications, formal institutional collaborations, and scientific publications worth sharing with the wider research community. In order to enable this, DISPPE is hosting a virtual network meeting of the awardees to share their results and have group discussions about challenges and benefits of working across countries, the role of capacity building, and how this could impact childhood obesity research.
The Adolescent HIV Implementation Science Alliance is preparing for its next in-person meeting in Kenya, April 30-May 2nd, in partnership with NICHD’s Prevention and Treatment through a Comprehensive Care Continuum for HIV-affected Adolescents in Resource Constrained Settings (PATC3H). DISPPE is continuing to work closely with NICHD on the next iteration of PATC3H, building an implementation science network called PATC3H-IN. The meeting will have sessions on planning for sustainability, dissemination to non-research audiences, and will include the PEPFAR scientific team to talk about their interest in implementation science and better understand how they can work together. DISPPE developed additional action groups with its members to shed light on underexplored areas of IS and AYA HIV to better understand the topic and develop public goods that promote the findings. DISPPE currently runs four groups: Sustainability, Dissemination, Whole Person Approach, and IS Frameworks and Models in LMICs. Beyond the meeting, DISPPE anticipates providing additional support for current local AHISA branches in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Central and West Africa, as well as alliances focused on young researchers. Early results from these alliances included one receiving research funding to conduct research on ART uptake among AYA developed in conjunction with youth, IS researchers, and the MOH. DISPPE anticipates the results from the AHISA evaluation will be received soon and will capture more of these outcomes.
FIC Communications Director Andrey Kuzmichev provided the Board with an update on the Communications Office. The FIC website had 10% more unique visitors, 17% more page views and its average Google search position increased by 0.3 in 2023 compared to 2022. Most of the
website's traffic comes from searches by a U.S. audience, and its top visited pages are Non-NIH Funding Opportunities, the Home Page, and Search Current & Recent Grants. FIC is present on 4 social media platforms, Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. In 2023 there was an increase in followers and posts on all 4 platforms with a decrease in engagement on Facebook and a minor reduction on YouTube. In 2023 the FIC's 3 E-Newsletters increased their subscribers but their open rate decreased, indicating an inverse relationship between the two numbers.
Dr. David Spiro updated the Board on the Division of International Epidemiology and Population Studies (DIEPS). DIEPS was part of a successful proposal with the UNC-led Center of Innovation in Outbreak Analytics and Coordinating Center and is 1 of 13 centers awarded by the CDC funded Center of Forecasting Analytics. The award allows DIEPS to continue to develop the science and applications of multi-model scenario projections to mitigate epidemics and pandemics, building on Scenario Modeling Hub experience with COVID-19, influenza and RSV. It also allows DIEPS to strengthen links between modelers and public health stakeholders as well as coordinate activities across the network, particularly via working groups and annual meetings. DIEPS developed a new RSV Scenario Modeling Hub born from work done on an Ebola Modeling Forecasting Challenge before the pandemic. During COVID-19 the Scenario Modeling Hub guided NPI and vaccine strategies and now for RSV it convened independent academic teams and public health stakeholders to address impacts of new RSV interventions in the U.S. and provided ensemble scenario projections for the 2023-2024 season based on 10 different models. Dr. Spiro informed the Board that Dr. Josh Rosenthal was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and now returns from building the first MPH program in India on Climate Change and Health, which is launching in March for its 2024 incoming student class. In 2023 DIEPS had 42 publications including 2 analyses of the COVID Scenario Modeling Hub and 2 analyses on building insights into pandemic preparedness.
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, Update from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, Director of NIAID, provided the Board with an overview of NIAID and discussed its international activities, some of which are with FIC. NIAID is a $6.6 billion entity with 3,500 employees and a history of bipartisan support. For the FY '24 budget the Senate Committee draft proposed a 0% change from FY '23 while the House Committee draft proposed a 22.9% decrease in funding for NIAID. NIAID is preparing for the potential budget cut by committing to only funding 90% of approved incoming funding levels for everything, but they are not modifying payments or funding of Fellowship training, career development, and SBIR awards. If the budget cut occurs NIAID may have to cut funding for competing research initiatives by up to 30%, leading to an overall success rate of 18-22% which is far lower than NIAID would like. NIAID is working to build relationships with people on the Hill to try and avoid any major budget cut.
As of FY '22 NIAID is the IC with the largest number of international awards with a total of 1,670; it has $667 million in funding for international activities that supports research in 133 countries and 10 overseas posts. NIAID supports global research through direct foreign awards, U.S. awards with foreign subcomponents, and intramural collaborations. Of NIAID's $667 million in international
funding 54.8% went to HIV/AIDS related missions, 26% went to Biodefense, and 19.2% went to Non-AIDS/Non-Biodefense missions. By region 39.9% of funding goes to Sub-Saharan Africa followed by the Americas and Caribbean at 21.6%, Europe at 20.2%, East Asia and the Pacific at 13.9%, and South and Central Asia with 3.7%. NIAID provides global leadership in HIV because it has a network of fully funded clinical research sites out of the Division of AIDS, that run all the HIV Prevention and Vaccine trials network studies as well as the AIDS clinical trials group study. NIAID also provides global leadership on infectious disease research and did so not just during COVID-19 but during the Ebola, SARS, and Zika outbreaks as well.
NIAID assisted with the COVID-19 Prevention and Therapeutic networks by having their HIV clinical research sites convert to suit the needs of the pandemic. Dr. Marrazzo explained how this shows that NIH has built an infrastructure that can provide a global network of high-quality trial sites that can manage participants ethically and thoroughly as well as handle data, I&D, product and regulatory requirements. NIAID has Bilateral programs that are custom agreements with countries where NAID funds a variety of efforts. These programs often have an in-country investigator paired with an NIAID investigator working together. NIAID and FIC have 2 large long-term partnerships, the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Initiative (EEID), and the Global Infectious Disease Research Training Program (GID). NIAID contributes $3.8 million to EEID and $4.5 million to GID. Dr. Marrazzo explained some challenges NIAID faces, including struggles from valuable scientific interactions being impacted by politics; trying to build cross communications between Divisions and Institutes; and having data and sample sharing prevented by burdensome processes and international policies. Dr. Marrazzo informed the Board that NIAID was kicking off a large strategic plan with the scientific, operational, and capacity priorities as well as cross cutting themes.
Dr. Atul Gawande, Update from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Dr. Atul Gawande, Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID, presented an overview of USAID to the Board. USAID has 900 employees in DC, with a total of 2,500 in 63 country offices around the world touching more than 100 countries where it does programming. USAID programming has over $8 billion in funding and a major investment in HIV making up 45% of its PEPFAR funding. USAID does work in TB and Malaria; in maternal/child health and nutrition; and addressing global health threats. USAID's work to help address global infectious and larger health systems threats has become almost a quarter of USAID's direct program budget. In the countries where USAID has had multi-sectoral programming child mortality rates have decreased and that decrease corresponds to a 6-year life expectancy increase in those countries. USAID's role is to set the metrics for how the U.S. assesses health threats and to prevent premature mortality, defined as the percentage of deaths in a country that occur before the age of 50; in Europe that rate is 7%, in the U.S. it's 13%. Around the world the strengthening of the health sector to address early life course has brought the net effect of USAID's overall efforts in having decreased the average rate of deaths before 50 to approximately 40% across the countries it works in.
There is a lot of learning to be had from countries where USAID produced gains that do not match their economic level. Several who have had USAID support for decades and graduated from it now match or exceed U.S. life expectancy with a fraction of its income. USAID's research and development strategy has 3 core objectives: use new and innovative health products and technologies; implement and upscale real-world evidence-based research and learning to improve health outcomes globally; and strengthen local health research and development capacity, and global research and development partnerships. FIC is deeply engaged in the first co-creation phase of USAID's Africa led HIV vaccine R&D project. Dr. Gawande discussed next areas he felt were critical including environmental health and lead toxicity; 90% of lead toxicity in the world is in low-income countries with major impacts from the neurotoxicity on child health and development.
Programmatic Presentation and Discussion: Infrastructure Development Training Programs for Critical HIV Research at Low and Middle-Income Country Institutions (G11)
Program Overview
Dr. Geetha Bansal, Program Officer for DITR, informed the Board about the Extramural Associate Research Development Award (EARDA) Program, giving a brief history and background of how it developed and the programs that came before it. The first program began in 1978 and was called the Extramural Associates Program (EAP). Initiated by the NIH OD and later operationalized by the NICHD in 1994, it was designed to promote the entry and participation of women's colleges and institutions with significantly underrepresented minority student populations into biomedical and biobehavioral research opportunities. The program focused on training individuals interested in becoming research administrators and academic science administrators. When NICHD became involved it turned the program into a grant mechanism, and in 2006 the program opened to international applicants. Other programs NICHD supported were FRESP, SRIP, and Transitional and BRAD Awards. In 2015 NICHD decided to discontinue the programs and NIAID and FIC created their own programs to fulfill the same goals. The programs that FIC and NIAID created have several differences; NIAID's are restricted to LMIC institutions with less than $8 million in NIAID grant funding and their U.S. partners must show that they've received and spent at least $5 million per year for the past 10 years of NIH funding. Applicants have to be senior administrators applying as PIs, and the grant has a yearly budget of $100,000 and lasts for 2 years. FIC's G11 program is open to PIs applying from both U.S. institutions and LMICs, and the PIs are not required to be research administrators. The G11 program is for institutions that have substantial ongoing HIV research, and they are required to build infrastructure as a resource across their institution and with collaborating institutions. While the institutions are required to have a focus on HIV the awards do not have to be for HIV related research. The grant has a yearly budget of $94,000 and lasts for 3 years. NIAID's program allows grantees to apply for at least one grant renewal, while the G11 does not allow any renewals.
Grantee Presentation
Dr. Adnan Hyder, Senior Associate Dean for Research & Innovation for the Milken Institute School of Public Health, presented to the Board on his program to strengthen the ethical review capacity in the Democratic Republic of Congo to enhance the administrative efficiency of the Kinshasa University School of Public Health (IRB). The program had recently come to a close and its goals were to enhance the ethics knowledge of IRB members; to support the IRB administration; and to effect an improvement in the efficiency and performance of the IRB overall, particularly focusing on staff and their ability to perform their functions. The program used different interventions that focused on the efficiency and operations of the Research and Ethics Committee as well as interventions largely based on knowledge and skill development. Some interventions included online classes through George Washington University, intensive bioethics training in the U.S., webinars, and many workshops. The program helped the IRB develop tracking, filing, and reference systems as well as assisted them in creating new policies and checklist management tools in order to support and provide technical assistance. The program was conducted not only by Dr. Hyder and colleagues but also with the help of African consultants and worked to engage the entire IRB community and members from other institutions.
Grantee Presentation
Dr. Echezona Ezeanolue, Professor and Director of the IVAN Research Institute of the University of Nigeria (UNN), presented to the Board on the partnership between UNN and UC San Diego (UCSD). Prior to Dr. Azeanolue joining UNN the institution had not been applying for NIH grants and thus lacked the infrastructure with which to do so. When the partnership began, they set out several goals, the first of which was to have UCSD heavily involved in the co-creation of the application to determine what UNN needed for grants management. Information gathered from there was used to improve grants management, proposal development, and the skills of the UNN research administration and HIV researchers. Another goal was to strengthen the ability of UNN researchers to submit successful grant applications to the NIH, which they did by providing mentorship, ongoing coaching, and online training through UCSD. In the last 2 years UNN has become a Grant Initiative Center in a Joint Implementation Science Alliance which was formed in 2015 in collaboration with FIC. The alliance allowed members to see the transition of HIV programs from U.S. institutions to Nigerian institutions and determine which methods worked and which did not. With that information they were able to build a national practice-based research network comprised of 36 institutions. UNN also submitted 15 grant applications and received 7 grants in those 2 years, giving UNN staff experience in the processes of grants management. The program is currently in its last year and is focused on sustaining the progress it has made.
Program Analysis
Ms. Celia Wolfman, Policy Analyst for DISPPE, reviewed the achievements of the G11 program over the last 10 years for the Board. Since 2013 there have been 91 applications of which 19 were awarded with an average success rate of 21%. G11s awarded a total of $5,416,691, with funds coming from its HIV AIDS designated dollars with no co-funding. Applications directly from foreign institutions had a 15% success rate while U.S. led applications had a success rate of 25%; 40 of
the 91 applications came from LMICs. The awards to LMICs were spread between 22 institutions in 13 countries; all but one went to Sub-Saharan Africa and Kenya had the most with 4 G11s. About half of the PIs listed on the G11 awards were former FIC grantees, 5 of which were HIV grantees and 6 were bioethics grantees. Of the 19 awards 7 were focused on building infrastructure and resources related to IRB or research integrity; 9 were centered on building offices for research administration or grants management; and the 3 remaining awards were for ICT, labs, and biostatistics.
Discussion
The Board Members and presenters discussed the different ways by which they could measure the success of the G11 awards and how they could attract more good applications for transforming LMICs. Dr. Kilmarx asked if the same institution could apply for additional G11s and Dr. Bansal explained that institutions are welcome to apply for G11s for different programs, but they cannot apply for a renewal or an additional award on a program that had already received a G11. Dr. John asked if the goal was for G11s to be used to train staff so that they could then train the next generation after the G11 ended, or whether there would be issues with that sustainment. Dr. Ezeanolue explained that in his experience the grant was to train the faculty so that they could then conduct the trainings themselves. It also allowed UNN to establish a lasting relationship with UCSD that will last well beyond the grant. Dr. Bansal asked the Board for suggestions on improvements they could make in what they required of applicants when they submitted their applications. Dr. John suggested sharing examples of successful grants, and what made them successful, to attract more quality applications. Dr. Germino proposed holding more webinars to clearly communicate the goals and requirements of the G11 grants to potential applicants. Dr. Sturke suggested writing papers on what institutions could do with the small amount of grant money so that institutions understood its worth and would be more likely to apply. Dr. Bansal noted that the lack of renewals might be deterring applicants.
GID D43 Concept/Reissue
Dr. Barbara Sina, Program Officer for DITR, briefed the Board on the Global Infectious Disease (GID) Research Training Grants program's concept review and sought their concurrence on the reissuance of the program. The program has existed for many years and was originally consolidated from several individual disease focused programs. The goal of the GID Research Training program is to build sustainable infectious disease research capacity at LMIC institutions. The program looks for applications from equitable partnerships between U.S. institutions and LMIC institutions; either one can submit the application and GID encourages applications to include MPIs. GID Research Training Grants provide mentored training-related infectious disease research experience for multiple trainees that is directly relevant to the health priorities of the LMIC. It supplies career training in research as well as opportunities to gain the skills to lead, manage, and train others in research. The grants last for up to 5 years of support and new awards receive a total of $250,000 and after award renewal grantees can apply for a $300,000 grant. The grant supports trainee advanced coursework, mentored research costs, and technical and professional skills
development. The program does not accept applications that only propose short-term training. The grant program's disease focus is essentially anything outside of HIV, such as major endemic or life-threatening emerging infectious diseases, neglected tropical disease, infections or microbiomes associated with non-communicable disease conditions of public health importance, and infections that frequently occur as co-infections in HIV infected individuals. The technical focus is extremely broad, including: basic, epidemiologic, clinical, behavioral, and social science research; bioengineering; bioinformatics, biostatistics, disease modelling; genetics/genomics; vector biology; pathophysiology, diagnostics, therapeutics research; implementation, health economics, health services and systems research; and clinical trials. Currently 58% of the grants are in Africa, 22% are in Latin America, and 20% are in Asia.
Closing Remarks
Dr. Kilmarx thanked the Board members and Fogarty staff for their time and input into the meeting and reviewed the highlights of the day's presentations and their major themes. Dr. Kilmarx thanked the presenters and guest speakers for their time and the critical insights they provided to the Board. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:46 p.m.