Biomedical Research Informatics for Global Health Training (BRIGHT) Program

University Of California, San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Biomedical Research Informatics for Global Health Training (BRIGHT) program was developed to build capacity in medium- and low-income settings in Brazil. An all in-country program was developed, in the previous funding period;we developed a new certificate program in clinical informatics and supported a newly created doctoral program in bioinformatics. As these programs based in Sao Paulo evolve, we plan to extend their reach outside the city, to northern areas of Brazil and to Maputo, Mozambique. We propose a program that will: (1) Train Brazil's and Mozambique's future scientific leaders to be equipped to use tools of genome science, biomedical and health informatics. It will do so by concentrating on life sciences domains that are of particular relevance to Brazil and Mozambique and that have high impact on global health, such as HIV/AIDS, cervical, colon, and breast cancer. We will address the different training needs of applied informatics research and basic informatics research by two distinct programs, which differ in duration and emphasis: (a) A one-year certificate program is aimed at meeting immediate human resource needs in applied biomedical and health informatics, (similar in goals to the formal master's program);and (b) A five-year doctoral program emphasizes basic informatics research that is motivated by real world problems. (2) Strengthen collaborations and data sharing between researchers in Brazil, Mozambique, and the USA. The focus is on cooperation enabled by informatics, and we will take advantage of the strengths of research of all participating faculty. Brazilian and Mozambican faculty and trainees will be able to go to international meetings to further develop their networks of collaborators. U.S. faculty will lecture and co-advise Brazilian and Mozambican students, co-develop curricula, and in turn acquire appreciation for the problems and issues concerning biomedical and health informatics in Brazil, Mozambique, and other dev eloping nations. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Building capacity in informatics is critical for developing countries to be able to partner with U.S. institutions in the containment of the HlV/AlDS epidemic, and for these institutions to perform multi-center research related to the evolution of the virus and resistance to therapeutic agents.