Fogarty African Bioethics Post-Doctoral Training Program

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The Fogarty African Bioethics Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program is an 18-month long advanced bioethics postdoctoral training program for scholars from sub-Saharan Africa who hold a bioethics-related PhD. This D43 renewal is a collaboration between Johns Hopkins University (USA), Makerere University (Uganda), and University of Oxford (UK). The program will deepen trainees' academic and scholarly skills in bioethics, foster leadership capacity, and create individual and group bioethics networking opportunities. Its substantive focus is in the area of global health ethics, with an emphasis on global infectious disease ethics and advanced research ethics. Ten postdocs will spend modular, dedicated time in each of the above institutions, and in their home institution, completing individual and collaborative scholarly writing, organizing a global health ethics leadership project, and engaging in global bioethics professional networks. The first 4.5 months of training will be hosted at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics completing courses and seminars; preparing bioethics manuscripts; engaging in team science; interacting with a vibrant community of bioethicists; and drafting a formal plan for their leadership project. Fellows will spend one month at the University of Oxford Ethox Centre where they will learn different approaches to bioethics, make additional professional connections, receive additional mentoring, become integrated into the Global Health Bioethics Network, participate in the well-attended Oxford Global Health & Bioethics International Conference, and work with faculty and fellows to organize a workshop on emerging topics in global health ethics. During the 11.5 months at home, fellows will focus on strategy, implementation, and management of their leadership project while participating in biweekly mentoring sessions and presenting their works-in-progress to colleagues in their home institutions. They will join quarterly global health ethics leadership webinars – a resource that will be shared widely – and engage several times virtually with program alumni and Africa-based bioethics scholars to organize an African Bioethics Scholars Network (ABSN). Fellows will spend the final month of the fellowship at Makerere University (Uganda), where the core activity will be hosting a hybrid meeting of the ABSN, during which fellows will present research and leadership projects and interact with others they invite for engagement. They will then participate in the Annual National Research Ethics Conference (ANREC), hosted annually by the Ugandan National Council for Science and Technology; network with the community of bioethics faculty at Makerere; and teach Fogarty trainees. The “glue” of the fellowship will be consistent mentoring, support, and feedback for every postdoc by program faculty and local mentors. By leveraging our experience and longstanding commitments to advanced bioethics training, along with well-developed institutional relationships, we propose this highly collaborative post-doctoral program to further advance the analytic thinking, visibility, leadership capacity, and professional networks of the top doctorally-trained bioethics scholars from sub-Saharan Africa.