Training in International Maternal and Child Health

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this five year Institutional National Research Service Award (NRSA) Training Grant (T32) is to train qualified United States citizens to undertake research in the area of maternal and child health in developing country settings. The program proposes to provide long-term training of pre-doctoral students leading to the awarding of the Ph.D. degree in International Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The training will be multi-disciplinary, but student will be able to focus on one of three disciplinary areas; human nutrition, behavioral sciences, and epidemiology. Within these three primary areas, students will be able to include other areas of focus such as bioethics, demography, infectious diseases, and vaccinology. The focus of the training will be to use these discipline bases to better understand the etiology, epidemiology, and interventions appropriate to improve maternal, neonatal, infant and child health in developing countries. Pre-doctoral course work will be undertaken at Johns Hopkins University, and the dissertation research will be conducted at faculty-established field sites in developing countries, in conjunction with local research institutions and collaborators. The Department of International Health has established field sites with laboratory, clinic and population-based activities in countries such as Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Zanzibar, Uganda, Ethiopia, Peru, and Guatemala. Students enrolled in the program will participate in (1) structured course work (2) a seminar series offered on appropriate topics (3) research practicum at the end of the first year of course work (4) teaching assistance in appropriate courses (5) a thesis research project. Students will be able to complete the degree within 3 and 5 years, depending on their backgrounds. Students who successfully complete the training program will be able to conduct research to improve the health and survival of women of reproductive age and their offspring in resource poor environments. They will have developed the appropriate cultural sensitivities, language skills and approach to collaboration with local partners in undertaking such research, and will be able to write independent grant applications to NIH and other competitive funding sources to conduct future research.