Milken Institute School of Public Health Receives $1.25 Million Grant to Launch Bioethics Research Training Program in West Africa


April 13, 2020

WASHINGTON, DC (April 13, 2020) – The Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) today announced receiving a $1.25 million grant to launch a research ethics training program in the West African country of Mali. 

Recently there has been an upsurge in public health and clinical research in West Africa, in part driven by the Ebola outbreak and new research in genomics. That growth has created an urgent need for improved bioethics leadership, training, policy and research in Mali and the West African Region, said Adnan Hyder, MD, MPH, PhD, senior associate dean for research at Milken Institute SPH and principal investigator of the new project.

“The goal of our training program is to strengthen research ethics education and research in Mali,” Hyder said. “Our innovative model will prepare researchers in West Africa today and will train the next generation of ethics leaders to take on the challenges of the future.”

The grant, awarded by the National Institutes of Health, will fund the five-year project called the United States-Mali Research Ethics Training Program. Milken Institute SPH will partner with the University of Sciences, Techniques & Technologies Barmako (USTTB) in Mali to carry out the project.

Working together, the researchers hope to enhance the strengths of key USTTB faculty to deliver research ethics courses and mentoring to students in Mali.

In addition, the project will develop a research ethics specialization within the existing USTTB Masters of Public Health program, with the goal of training a core group of professionals with this expertise in Mali.

The project will promote study around key priorities for research ethics in Mali, including the ethics of infectious and emerging disease research and the ethics of testing and evaluating genetic approaches to improve health care services.
 
Finally, the researchers will help to create a dedicated research ethics unit within USTTB in Mali.

“We are thrilled to launch this collaborative research project with our colleagues in Mali,” said Paul Ndebele, PhD, the research regulatory specialist at Milken Institute SPH and a co-principal investigator for the grant. “We hope the project will result in better awareness of ethical conduct in public health and clinical research.”

Seydou Doumbia, MD, PhD, from USTTB will also serve as a co-principal investigator and major collaborator on the project. “This project shows the importance of US-Mali collaboration in developing bioethics expertise and building on the growing research enterprise here at USTTB."