The UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) is delighted to announce this year's International Pilot Awards. The International Pilot Awards are for development and implementation of innovative and collaborative HIV-related research projects in developing countries by junior faculty. Awardees can be funded up to $15,000 over one year.

Please join us in congratulating two UW Department of Global Health faculty on receiving 2019 Martin Luther King Jr.

Stefan Wiktor, acting professor of global health at the University of Washington Schools of Public Health and Medicine, has received funding through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to promote HIV prevention and treatment and to help Zimbabwe’s efforts to reach HIV epidemic control. The five-year cooperative agreement, with an annual budget of about $15 million, is administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Samantha Dolan, a PhD student in Implementation Science, has received the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations award to use technology to strengthen health systems aimed at improving data use by healthcare workers in order to increase vaccination uptake amongst children in Kenya.

According to the WHO, the number of people worldwide with diabetes has risen from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. And this number is expected to keep rising, with diabetes prevalence rising more rapidly in low- and middle-income countries. Diabetes can lead to serious health problems, including blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and lower limb amputation. 

An analysis conducted by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) observed an overall increase in the proportion of racial and ethnic minorities enrolled in Phase 1 and Phase 2A preventive HIV vaccine clinical trials in the United States between 2002 and 2016 compared to 1988 to 2002. The findings were published on December 5, 2018 in Public Health Reports.

By Pauline Kairu, Daily Nation 

Are you a man aged between 18 and 50? Are you sexually active and in a steady, monogamous relationship? And finally, have you ever pictured yourself as the one carrying the burden of family planning in the relationship? Well, an exciting global study on male contraception is happening in Kenya.

All the men in the experiment, a phase-two clinical trial, will be required to apply a gel on their shoulders. This gel is intended to lower sperm count to a point at which the men cannot impregnate a woman.

Published January 17, 2019

Co-authored by Kristie Ebi, MPH, PhD, UW Professor in Global Health and Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences

While promising vaccines and experimental treatments are rapidly being added to our arsenal, they’re not much use if people are too afraid to seek care.

By Karin Huster, Clinical Instructor, UW Department of Global Health and field coordinator with Doctors Without Borders.

While significant progress has been made in improving the lives of women and girls over the past two decades, far too often addressing “women’s health” in low- and middle-income countries is still equated to improving their reproductive health. In reality, women’s health needs are diverse and span the entire spectrum of universal health care.