The VECDor Global Health Training Program (GHTP) comprises four outstanding institutions ? Vanderbilt (V), Emory (E), Cornell (C), and Duke (D) ? collectively, VECD ? with decades-long global partnerships with premier LMIC research institutions in Africa (Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda), Asia (India, Vietnam), Latin America (Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala), and the Caribbean (Haiti). Collectively, VECDor's well-funded research portfolio encompasses diverse and complementary topics in communicable and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). All VECDor institutions have made substantial investments in global health training, which will continue to provide maximal leveraging of NIH resources. VECDor institutions and faculty have a long history of global engagement, investigative accomplishment, and mentoring excellence, evidenced by successfully deploying and mentoring 87 VECDor highly productive trainees from 2012-2017. Using a highly efficient support center that maximizes the direction of funds to research training, and leveraging multiple sources of financial and in-kind co-funding, we will link with T32 and other NIH-funded training programs and with minority institution partners to select and deploy 80 to 100 US and LMIC trainees from 2017-2022 with outstanding promise for research careers. VECDor will implement a strategic mentoring and trainee support plan across the consortium, including a substantial preparation phase prior to field deployment and continuing after the research year is completed, to ensure the highest quality research publications and scientific meeting presentations and maximum trainee success in obtaining research and career development grants. Research themes will address all topic and geographical areas of interest to trainees and NIH Institutes and Centers. We will document the Program's impact through a long-term monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan that tracks the career directions and outputs of all trainees and will further refine our existing web-based tools to share knowledge, foster local and global networking, and strengthen and sustain clinical research skills among global health fellows and alumni. VECDor is built on the mutual respect of our US and global partners and our collective track record of research innovation and mentorship. Combining our extensive recent experience in research training program management, robust research funding bases in major diseases of global significance, renowned international research training partners and sites, and enhanced institutional co-funding commitments, VECDor will continue to nurture key members of the global health research workforce of the 21st century, as we have done within the incumbent VECDor program.
Global health themes are inherently important for developing countries, but are also critical for Americans living in a globalized economy, as our citizens increasingly work and relate to countries with health challenges that may mimic or be quite divergent from challenges at home. In this renewal application, the Vanderbilt-Emory- Cornell-Duke Consortium for Global Health Fellows proposes to continue and expand our efforts to identify, recruit, and nurture future leaders in global health research through a collaborative training program with our strong LMIC institutional partners, and to evaluate and document the program's impact.
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