Letter from the Director

This past year has been an exciting one for global health at MUSC. In November of 2012, the MUSC Center for Global Health was established, and we have hit the road running. I welcome you to visit the center's website to get an overview of the many exciting global health projects being implemented by the dedicated faculty, students and staff at MUSC. A major goal of the center is to support and encourage global research, training, and service.

To do this we have been working hard this past year to make MUSC a user friendly setting for global health activities, including establishing an emergency evacuation insurance policy covering MUSC employees and students overseas on MUSC-sponsored projects, working closely with multiple offices on campus to streamline administrative support for overseas projects, and holding roundtable discussion meetings to identify and fund priority areas of research and service.

The Center also recently established a faculty pilot research fund to support the collection of preliminary data for studies in low and middle income countries, with a goal of better positioning our faculty to successfully compete for larger research awards in global health. Five awards were made, and several of these faculty projects are highlighted in this inaugural issue of our newsletter. We also established a student global health educational travel fund, and have made awards to multiple students to help support travel costs associated with research, education, and service in low-income countries.

This coming year the Center for Global Health will host a forum for returning students to present on their field experiences, and we encourage you to attend to learn about the life-changing work that our students are engaged in overseas. This past year we also hosted a global health speaker series, and had excellent and well attended lectures presented by Mike Merson, Director of The Duke University Global Health Institute; Kevin O'Reilly from the World Health Organization's Department of HIV/AIDS; and James Curran, Dean of Emory's Rollins School of Public Health. As we approach the 2013/2014 academic year we look forward to continuing to support the expansion of global health work at MUSC, and welcome your input and suggestions on how we can best meet the needs of the MUSC community.

Michael Sweat, Ph.D.
Director, MUSC Center for Global Health