The School of Public Health’s Office of Global Health has awarded three grants totaling $40,000 to faculty members in public health, anthropology and medicine.  Grant recipient Trude Bennett, DrPH, professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, will use the funds to study “Methods, Strategies and Ethics on Prenatal Genetic Screening in Vietnam.”

The awards are administered by the UNC Partnership in Global Health, which is funded by the Fogarty International Center – the international component of the National Institutes of Health – and the UNC Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development.

Other recipients include:

• Dr. Mark Sorenson, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, for “A proposal to examine the relationships between economic status and psychosocial stress and risk markers for metabolic syndrome in Siberia,” and

• Dr. Susan Hogan, assistant professor, and Dr. Doug Morgan, associate professor, in the Department of Medicine, for “Collaborative Chronic Disease Initiatives in Nicaragua: Toward a Better Understanding of Digestive, Kidney and Diabetic Diseases.”

Bennett traveled to Vietnam in April to begin discussion with her collaborators.

“The trip was extremely beneficial in strengthening existing partnerships, developing new relationships, and creating linkages for monitoring and prevention of birth defects and disabilities in Vietnam,” Bennett said.

“The agreement reached with Dr. Nguyen Viet Nhan (Chief of the Department of Medical Genetics at Hue College of Medicine and Pharmacy) is especially promising for future collaborative research with significant public health impact. Institutional relations between the UNC School of Public Health and the Hanoi School of Public Health should also gain from these meetings.”

Bennett says she “will continue to work to build relations between UNC and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations in central and southern – as well as northern – Vietnam.”  

The School of Public Health’s Office of Global Health serves as the coordinating unit for the School’s global health activities. 

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For more information about the Office of Global Health, visit www.sph.unc.edu/globalhealth, or contact Gretchen Van Vliet, director, 919-843-7723 or gretchen_vanvliet@unc.edu.

School of Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.