Myanmar has committed to malaria elimination by 2030. The malaria burden is falling in Myanmar, but reaching elimination will require strong and sustainable malaria research capacity within the government institutions leading the elimination effort, and close partnership between scientists and program professionals to translate research results into practice quickly and effectively. We propose to provide high-quality interdisciplinary malaria research training for public sector scientists and health professionals who are committed to malaria elimination in Myanmar. This Global Infectious Disease Research Training Program (GIDRTP) will build on a strong foundation provided by an active portfolio of interdisciplinary malaria research that includes field and laboratory- based projects funded by the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and an NIAID International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research, among others. These projects are all led by the multiple principal investigators of this proposal, in close partnership with in-country partners, all within the Ministry of Health and Sports: the Department of Medical Research (DMR), the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) and the University of Public Health (UPH).
The aim of the training program is to strengthen the capacity to conduct independent, sustainable malaria research in both the research and program arms of the Ministry of Health and Sports, with interdisciplinary training in a range of topics relevant to malaria elimination, including global health, health systems and health policy, implementation science, epidemiology and biostatistics, molecular and genomic epidemiology, sero-epidemiology, and/or surveillance and geospatial modeling and mapping. This will be accomplished through a mix of short-term, project-based and degree training. Long-term degree training will take place in Yangon, Myanmar at the University of Public Health (8 MPH and 2 PhD trainees), at Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China (2 MSc in Global Health), and at the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI) in Durham, NC (4 MSc and 1 PhD in Global Health). Non-degree lab-based short-term training will take place in the Parasitology Division and the Advanced Molecular Research Center at DMR in Yangon, in the malaria laboratory of the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Shanghai, China, and in a new malaria center and the Center for Genomics and Computational Biology at Duke University in Durham. Non- degree field-based research training will be conducted in our field research study sites in Myanmar where ongoing population-based studies will continue to be conducted for at least the next six years. The proposed training is expected to result in strengthened malaria research capacity that will be resilient to social and political disruptions and increase the prospects for meeting malaria elimination milestones in Myanmar. Additional outcomes of the training program will be closer collaborative relationships between DMR, NMCP and UPH, and between public health scientists in Myanmar, China and the U.S.
Master's, PhD and short-term training in interdisciplinary malaria research will be provided to public sector scientists and health professionals working to eliminate malaria in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country with the highest malaria burden. This hybrid training program will be conducted in Myanmar, China and the United States and is expected to increase malaria research capacity and accelerate the pace of malaria elimination in Myanmar.
