Eric Wang, Senior Photographer

The Yale Institute for Global Health has invited Yale faculty to affiliate with the Institute in a bid to centralize global health research on campus.

Founded in 2018, the Institute aims to support Yale faculty from the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health, the School of Nursing and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who conduct global health research. Affiliated faculty will receive consultant review of their global health grant applications, mentions in YIGH communications, monthly newsletters, assistance with inclusion in the global health experts list for media requests and the ability to apply for the Spark Award and the Hecht Global Health Faculty Network Award. 

“There is incredible work in global health happening across many of the Yale schools and YIGH is doing a lot of work to better connect those working in the same settings and to facilitate shared learning among the many faculty doing global health work,” Nicola Hawley, an associate professor of epidemiology and anthropology at the School of Public Health, wrote in an email to the News.

Hawley, a YIGH affiliate, said that prior to the Institute’s founding, there was a need to centralize global health resources and support global health researchers at Yale. 

As a global health researcher, Hawley worked with “multiple stakeholders” in a number of countries and helped to promote their careers, giving coveted first and last author positions on published research to those “local collaborators.” As a result, she explained that in many cases, a global health researcher’s CV does not look like a “traditional” medical or public health researcher’s CV. 

“The dean of the [School of Nursing] actually went and talked to the [School of Medicine] dean, and really just tried to pitch the fact that as junior faculty working in global health, we really needed the support and an entity to get behind us,” Hawley said about the conversations that led to the Institute’s founding. 

To foster collaboration and discussion within global health topics, the YIGH utilizes two funding mechanisms to support faculty: the Spark Award and the Hecht Global Health Faculty Network Award.

The Spark Award is an award for up to $10,000. As in the name, the award focuses on sparking collaborations in global health, whether it be collecting data on an issue or doing a literature review.

On the other hand, the Hecht award provides up to $50,000 for a faculty network that comes together with a proposal focused on a particular issue or theme.

“We have faculty that have come together on particular issues or themes in global health like malaria or other diseases,” explained Michael Skonieczny, the deputy director of YIGH. “Or, they have work focused on a particular country or region in the world.”

Hawley’s research in non-communicable diseases has been funded by two Hecht Awards. The first award funded a project that studied cardiovascular disease and self-management of cardiovascular disease in Uganda, and the second award was received this year for an ongoing project. 

Additionally, YIGH runs a signature seminar series that Heather Reynolds, a retired lecturer in nursing in the Yale School of Nursing Nurse-Midwifery Specialty Program, described as “great.” 

For faculty who are interested in affiliating, the application process is relatively simple. According to Skonieczny, any faculty members with interest or work in global health can reach out to the YIGH, upon which there will be a set of instructions to complete in order to affiliate. From there, faculty members may choose to sign up for the YIGH newsletter. Once the faculty member has affiliated, their profile will be posted on the YIGH website and they will begin to receive updates about various opportunities.

There is no set limit to the number of faculty who can affiliate with the institute.