The Water and Health in Limpopo Innovations Fellowship Program

描述（由申请人提供）：水和健康在林波波（WHIL）创新奖学金计划将提供全球卫生创新的跨学科培训，以12名博士后研究员，6名来自美国和6名来自南部非洲农村，在未来五年。该方案将侧重于南部非洲农村地区难以获得水和卫生设施以及与幼儿腹泻有关的高发病率和死亡率等密切相关的问题。弗吉尼亚大学（UVa）和南非文达大学之间近十年的合作将主办这一计划，由国际公认的全球健康领导者和幼儿腹泻（ECD）专家Richard Guerrant博士领导，在UVa，并由Pascal Bessong博士，UNIVEN教授和微生物学主席。此次合作得到了来自这两个机构的多学科教师团队的支持，他们在肠道疾病、农村水净化策略、农村护理、社区规划、基于代理的建模、儿童发展、跨文化民族志以及南非方面拥有特殊专业知识与水和人权相关的法律。该小组成立于过去四年，并制定了跨学科和跨海洋协调，奖学金和培训的协议和战略。WHIL创新奖学金将为来自美国和南部非洲的有前途的医生准备的潜在全球卫生领导者提供机会，参加指导性的全球卫生研究和教育培训，特别关注水和幼儿发展的获取和质量。培训计划的主要目标是：（1）培养参与创新全球卫生研究合作所需的技能，包括社区参与，农村水资源管理，幼儿发展影响的测量，全球卫生模拟建模，跨学科合作，全球卫生研究伦理，项目 管理和实验室管理;（2）在多学科WHIL计划的背景下进行创新的，指导性的全球健康研究项目;（3）开发一系列研究和培训成果，作为发展个人努力的框架，并作为未来研究员和其他学员的资源。我们计划招募来自多个学科的研究员，并希望通过我们完善和多元化的教师培训团队吸引优秀的候选人。我们希望我们的学员将有助于有意义的新的研究有关农村水和卫生设施的提供和幼儿发展的WHIL计划的背景下。更重要的是，我们将确保他们准备好以创新的务实态度思考这些问题，这意味着，当他们制定令人兴奋的新干预措施，流程和政策时，他们将预测并纳入社区可接受性，有效性，可负担性，可获得性和可扩展性的问题。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Water and Health in Limpopo (WHIL) Innovations fellowship program will provide cross-disciplinary training in global health innovation to twelve post-doctoral fellows, six from the United States and six from rural Southern Africa, over the next five years. The program will focus on the closely related issues of poor access to water and sanitation in rural areas of Southern Africa and unacceptably high rates of morbidity and mortality associated with early childhood diarrhea. The nearly decade old collaboration between the University of Virginia (UVa) and the University of Venda, South Africa that will host this program is led by the internationally-recognized global health leader and early childhood diarrhea (ECD) specialist, Dr. Richard Guerrant, at UVa, and by Dr. Pascal Bessong, UNIVEN Professor and Chair of Microbiology. The collaboration is supported by a multi-disciplinary group of faculty from both institutions with particular expertise in enteric disease, rural water purification strategies, rural nursing, community planning, agent- based modeling, child development, cross-cultural ethnography, and South African law related to water and human rights. This group has formed over the past four years and has developed protocols and strategies for trans-disciplinary and trans-oceanic coordination, scholarship, and training. The WHIL Innovations fellowship will provide promising doctorally-prepared potential global health leaders from the US and Southern Africa with the opportunity to participate in mentored global health research and education training with a particular focus on access to and quality of water and ECD. Major objectives of the training program are: (1) To build skills necessary to engage in innovative global health research collaborations including specific tailored training in community engagement, rural water management, measurement of impacts of ECD, simulation modeling in global health, trans-disciplinary collaboration, global health research ethics, project management, and laboratory management; (2) To conduct an innovative, mentored global health research project in the context of the multi-disciplinary WHIL program; and (3) To develop a portfolio of research and training outputs that will serve as a framework from which to develop individual efforts and as a resource for future fellows and other trainees. We plan to recruit fellows from many disciplines and expect to attract outstanding candidates thanks to our well-established and diverse faculty training group. We expect that our trainees will contribute meaningful new research relating to rural water and sanitation provision and ECD in the context of the WHIL program. More importantly, we will ensure that they are prepared to think with innovative pragmatism about these issues meaning that, as they develop exciting new interventions, processes and policies, they will anticipate and incorporate questions of community acceptability, efficacy, affordability, accessibility, and scalability.