Next Faculty Travel Grant Deadline:  March 15

"Don't just give them a fish; teach them how to fish," said Walter Lee, referencing the Chinese proverb to describe his aspirations for building a collaboration with Vietnamese colleagues on clinical research.  

With support from a DGHI travel grant, the Duke head and neck surgeon made his third trip to the southeast Asian country in December to determine the need for increased clinical research skills among Vietnamese health care providers.

Working with Resource Exchange International (REI-Vietnam), an NGO based in Vietnam, Lee thought the time was right to explore research opportunities  that combine health care service delivery, patient outcomes, medical information, and leadership and governance.    

"How can we look at more global level, research-type outcomes in Vietnam? Getting their health care providers trained to conduct applicable, well-defined research is something they have little training in and that Duke is world-renowned for," said Lee. "Now, we are looking to secure more funding for projects that utilize these new collaborations."  

One of the first goals of the collaboration will be to bring a Vietnamese fellow to Duke to be fully immersed in Duke's tradition of clinical research.  As the collaboration is funded, the long-term goal will be to train and mentor Vietnamese hospital leaders and health care providers on the essentials of clinical research.

Dr. Olola Oneko, a practicing OB/GYN at Tanzania's Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), came to Durham earlier this month to visit colleagues at Duke and DGHI, or as he calls them, his friends. During his trip, he met with collaborators in women's health, oncology, pathology and other areas, with the hope of building more collaborations in global cancer, a growing chronic issue in Africa.

KCMC is DGHI's longest-standing collaboration, with a history of successful partnerships around global health research and education. To date, the KCMC-Duke Collaboration has primarily focused its research efforts on infectious diseases, women's health and mental health. The collaboration has most recently been awarded a $10 million grant to enhance medical education in Tanzania.  

"The collaboration has really been beneficial to us," said Oneko. "We intend to continue to carry on this collaboration by expanding our work in oncology, pathology and administration in order to address health challenges."

Oneko is involved in KCMC-Duke research and training programs related to cervical cancer, emergency obstetric care, and obstetric fistulae and trauma. In women's health, faculty have trained Tanzanian health care workers in emergency obstetrics, and research is under way to better understand the psychological symptoms of women with obstetric fistulae and the most common types of cervical cancer in Tanzania.