Enabling Infectious Disease Research Capacity in the Peruvian Amazon

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PROJECT SUMMARY Peru is rapidly increasing in stature in public health research, and many successful Peruvian-US research teams have expanded research capacity through training grants based in major universities in Lima. Many of these partnerships have satellite activities to study infectious diseases in Iquitos, the major city in the Peruvian Amazon, but these research and capacity building activities have largely bypassed academic institutions in Iquitos. This D43 training grant is specifically designed to address and correct this disparity, offering a collaborative research training program in partnership with the Universidad Nacional de la Amazonia Peruana (UNAP; National University of the Peruvian Amazon), the largest health education institution in the region. In this renewal, our goal is to continue expanding the local workforce of highly trained professionals with public health and infectious diseases research skills, which we propose to achieve by continuing the training of three current trainees on towards the Doctoral Program in Public Health at UNAP and receive two incoming specialist physicians trainees to complete a master’s degree in public health at UNAP. This intensive, mentored training program with both north-south and south-south training components will be led by faculty from four collaborating institutions (UNAP, University of Virginia, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia [the leading biomedical research university in Peru, located in Lima], Tulane University, and the University of Arizona (UA)). The majority of the training will be conducted locally at UNAP through training modules and online components. We will supplement the two-year MPH program at UNAP with complementary, short-term training modules led by UVA, Tulane, UPCH, UA and USDA faculty that will be open to all MPH and doctoral students in the UNAP program, expanding the impact of the training program to approximately 80 additional master’s level trainees and 10 doctoral level trainees. Modules will be specifically focused on human subjects training, rigor and reproducibility of research, scientific writing and grant writing, data management and visualization, scientific communication and regulatory aspects of research in Peru and the US. Working closely with UNAP faculty, we will integrate new program content into the existing MPH and Doctoral curriculum, providing sustainable, ongoing benefits for future UNAP MPH and Doctoral classes. MPH and Doctoral trainees will conclude their training by taking a leading role in writing and assembling a Fogarty International Center Global Health Fellowship, while additionally, Doctoral level students will pursue a Prociencia Seed Grant [entity of the Peruvian Counsel on Science, Technology, and Technological Innovation], the premier scientific funding agency in Peru) under the direction of a mentoring team. We will continue to offer one-month short courses during Years 2-5 for training community field workers and laboratory support staff will also be offered, expanding the pool of research program support staff in Iquitos.