Global health researchers at the Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health received a $1.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to launch the Implementation and Systems Sciences Institute.

The program will train leaders to address the rise of chronic diseases – such as cancer, heart disease and mental illness – in low and middle-income countries.

During the course of five years, 60 young health professionals and scientists from Mexico and India will come to Emory each year for an intensive, three-week program through the Institute. The trainees will participate in modules on topics such as organizational systems and leadership development.

Program participants will then spend the remaining 11 months of the year applying the information they have learned in their home countries.

Mohammed Ali, assistant professor in the Rollins Hubert Department of Global Health, said those who have chronic illnesses – such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease – fare disproportionately worse in lower-income countries, including Mexico and India, as compared to the Western world. He said that much of this problem lies within communication between governments and leaders.

“A lot of what we need in public and global health is good leadership and political will. How do you get governments and others to take notice of these things?” Ali said. “This requires leaders to be able to communicate effectively about what is needed at a higher level.”

The new Emory Implementations and Systems Sciences Institute signals a shift in focus from research to policy development and application. Ali said the goal of the program is to take promising potential health leaders with interest in chronic diseases and train them to implement research knowledge and aspects into policy development.

“There’s a lot that we know from academia and years of research about what the strongest factors for these conditions are and what proven interventions are out there,” Ali said. “A lot of what’s not out there is implementing that knowledge.”

The Hubert Department of Global Health has several training programs already in place, including fellowship programs and disease-specific programs.

The new program’s emphasis on implementation sciences, however, is a departure from tradition, according to Ali.

“The focus has always been to research methods or to teach disease-specific content,” Ali said. “The research method we use develops good evidence but there’s very little out there in the world in terms of training courses to take the research and figure out the implementation that you need to understand.”

Ali and Venkat Narayan, the Ruth and O.C. Hubert chair of global health at Rollins, developed and co-authored the concept for the grant. The University is partnering with the Public Health Foundation of India and the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico to make the program possible.

Ali is optimistic about the potential for the Emory Implementations and Systems Sciences Institute.

“We have a real opportunity to strengthen the systems within low and middle income countries. The real hope is that this young talent would be able to develop policy programs in their countries and that the burden of chronic diseases might be lessened,” said Ali.

– By Harmeet Kaur 

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