Media Contact: Kathleen Fackelmann, [email protected], 202-994-8354
WASHINGTON, DC (June 8, 2015)—Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Rebecca Katz, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of health policy and management at the Milken Institute SPH, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “New Ways of Working Together: Integrating Community-Based Interventions for Schistosomiasis and Malaria.”
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Katz’s project is one of more than 50 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 14 grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To receive funding, Katz and other Grand Challenges Explorations winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas that included new approaches for addressing control of neglected tropical diseases. The foundation will be accepting applications for the next GCE round in September 2015.
Katz, along with Claire Standley, PhD, MSc, a senior research scientist at Milken Institute SPH as well as co-principal investigator of the study, will use the grant money to develop a system for an integrated, sustainable program to control schistosomiasis and malaria, serious tropical diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. Currently, many countries conduct separate, stand-alone efforts to control these different diseases, but there is increasing awareness of the potential benefits of a more holistic approach.
The Milken Institute SPH team will develop a model that analyzes options for putting the separate malaria and schistosomiasis programs together, to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of both. The researchers will use data from existing programs in Africa and the Middle East, and then propose a model to reduce the prevalence of these tropical diseases.
If the model performs well in theoretical terms, the Milken Institute SPH team hopes to secure additional funding to field test the model in one or more target countries, by implementing the model’s integrated control protocol in some areas while leaving others separate as controls. “We will examine the outcomes in both cases to see if the experimental integrated program saves money and reduces disease burden,” Katz says. Ultimately, the team would like to develop a model that could be used not just for malaria and schistosomiasis, but as a standard methodology for quantitatively integrating disease programs across the public health spectrum.
About Grand Challenges Explorations
Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, over 1100 projects in more than 60 countries have received Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of US$100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1 million.
About Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University:
Established in July 1997 as the School of Public Health and Health Services, Milken Institute School of Public Health is the only school of public health in the nation’s capital. Today, more than 1,700 students from almost every U.S. state and 39 countries pursue undergraduate, graduate and doctoral-level degrees in public health. The school also offers an online Master of Public Health, MPH@GW, and an online Executive Master of Health Administration, MHA@GW, which allow students to pursue their degree from anywhere in the world.