Intemational
Services
International Highlights
Summary of NIH International
Highlights
November 2000 –
March 2001
Program Developments
Fogarty
International Center
Second Global Forum
on Bioethics in
Research:
The second Global Forum on
Bioethics in Research took place in Bangkok, Thailand on
October 14-15, 2000. The
meeting was hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO),
working with FIC and number of other NIH institutes, the CDC,
the United Kingdom’s Medical Research Council (MRC), the
South African MRC and other international agencies. Most
of the 140 participants from 40 countries were from the
developing world. The meeting focused on capacity building for
ethics review in developing countries, the benefit of the
process and products of research to the host country, and the
impact of international and national intellectual property
rights. The next
forum will be held in The Gambia in October 2001.
International
Tobacco Control Research and Training Initiative:
FIC has initiated an effort to address the impact of tobacco
on health in the developing world.
A Request for Applications (RFA) for international
research and training in tobacco and health, which emphasizes
behavioral and social issues contributing to the initiation of
smoking, will be issued
this fiscal year. The program is being developed in
coordination with NCI, NIDA, NICHD, and other NIH institutes
involved in research on tobacco-related diseases; CDC, which
is responsible for the Government’s global surveillance in
tobacco; and WHO, which has launched its Tobacco-Free
Initiative. The
intent is to build capacity in the developing world in
epidemiological and biobehavioral research, prevention,
treatment, communications, and policy research. The program will support collaborative protocols and
U.S.-based training of low- or middle-income country
scientists and health professionals.
The level of specialization in any given international
program would vary based on the strengths of the collaborating
institutions. The program would reflect the need for
transdisciplinary teams of experts to contend with the tobacco
epidemic, linking various specializations.
A colloquium was held with scientists from low-and
middle-income countries as an ancillary session to the 10th
World Conference on Tobacco or Health in order to hear
perspectives on needs and opportunities for collaboration.
Report
on WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control
FIC hosted a meeting of the Trans-NIH Tobacco Group and NIH IC
International Representatives at which Dr. Thomas Novotny,
Director of the DHHS Office of International and Refugee
Health, addressed the status of the development of WHO's
Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC). The
intent of the FCTC is to reduce the impact and halt the growth
of the global tobacco epidemic.
Stigma Research
Initiative:
FIC
will host a stigma conference in September that will focus on
ways to combat the cross-cutting issue of stigma in this
country and in the developing world.
FIC staff is planning this conference in consultation
with a trans-NIH committee and a panel of experts that is
currently being formed. The burden of stigma due to disease
will worsen significantly as the incidence of such
marginalizing illnesses as HIV/AIDS and major depression
increase. Individuals
with stigmatized diseases are less likely to seek medical
attention, causing higher morbidity and mortality among these
“silently sick” populations, and communicable diseases
like HIV/AIDS spread more easily through populations with
untreated individuals. In
order to address some of these crucial issues, FIC plans to
issue an RFA for stigma research for funding in FY 02.
Multilateral
Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Grantee Symposium:
In its role as Secretariat of the MIM, FIC organized a
symposium of grantees funded by MIM at the 49th
Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine
and Hygiene (ASTMH) in Houston, Texas in October. The
Symposium included presentations by principal investigators
from South Africa, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya and Ghana.
The MIM also held a one-day Grant Writing and Peer
Review Workshop at the ASTMH for malaria researchers from
endemic countries. In
order to encourage collaborations between malaria researchers
and hematologists, FIC, in its role as MIM Secretariat, worked
with NIAID and NHLBI to organize a Symposium on Malarial
Anemia at the American Society for Hematology meeting in San
Francisco in December.
Management-Training
Program for African Research Institute Leaders:
The MIM secretariat organized a one-day meeting in Oxford,
U.K. to discuss steps to support a proposed
management-training program for African research institute
leaders. Participants
included representatives of U.S and foreign government
agencies, academic organizations and medical research councils
in Europe and Africa.
International
Clinical and Operational Research and Training Award (ICORTA):
FIC,
in collaboration with NIMH, NIA, and NIDA, will issue an RFA
in February for a program to develop multidisciplinary
international training and research programs in clinical and
operational research. The
program will emphasize mental health, aging, complementary and
alternative medicine, and drug abuse in the first issue of the
RFA. The
long-term goals of the program are to build global clinical
and operational research capacity and collaborations in an
effort to better understand, investigate, control, prevent,
treat, and manage a range of global health problems expected
to impact countries as part of the anticipated future global
burden of disease. Awards
are intended to strengthen global capacity to design and
conduct clinical and operational research necessary to
characterize disease burdens, to devise and evaluate practical
and affordable therapeutic or preventive interventions, and to
help developing nations contribute to and benefit from
international efforts to apply new discoveries to clinical and
public health practice. FIC
expects to issue
a similar RFA for FY 2002 funding focused on global infectious
disease challenges, including HIV/AIDS.
International
Bioethics Education and Career Development Award:
Four awards were made to U.S. institutions under the
International Bioethics and Career Development Award program.
Two programs will focus on Africa and one on Latin
America; three programs will offer a curriculum of short
courses at the NIH Clinical Center; and two will include
internships at WHO. In
addition, three planning grants were provided to two South
African universities and the University of Chile to enable
them to further develop their programs and revise their
applications for a re-competition of this program in FY 02.
International
Research Scientist Development Awards (IRSDA):
Following discussions with the Advisory Board, FIC
recently made a number of changes to IRSDA award provisions in
order to increase program flexibility, as follows:
1) the amount of the award was increased from $200,000
to $300,000 for a project that must include two years at a
foreign site and one year in the United States; 2) although a
grantee must spend the required number of months at the
foreign and U.S. sites, the project, and the funds, may now be
spread over a five-year period instead of the current three
years; 3) the amount of the award allotted to salary and
benefits is increased from $50,000 to $75,000 per year. These
changes were instituted in order to address concerns over the
grantee’s need to spend time in the United States for family
and professional reasons unrelated to the fellowship, and to
make the salary provisions competitive with similar NIH
awards.
Ecology
of Infectious Diseases:
Twelve new RO1 awards were made at the end of FY
00 from the first competition of this interagency (NIH-NSF),
inter-IC (FIC, NIAID, NIEHS, NIGMS) program.
FIC made three awards and co-funded all others (NSF-6,
NIAID-3, NIEHS-1).
Each award will support up to five years of research
for up to $350,000 per year in direct costs.
Because of the extraordinary response to this
initiative, a modified version of last year’s RFA was
released at the end of January for funding in FY
02.
International
Training and Research in Environmental and Occupational Health
(ITREOH):
FIC has received more than 50 letters of intent in
response to an RFA for the second five-year recompetition of
the ITREOH, which appeared in the NIH Guide to Grants and
Contracts in December. The
program, co-sponsored by NIEHS, the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and CDC, looks at
interfaces between environmental and occupational illness and
climate, infectious diseases, and injuries.
It trains scientists from developing countries to deal
effectively with environmental and occupational health
problems through epidemiologic research (including biomarker
risk assessment), environmental monitoring, engineering
control, and prevention research. The ITREOH Annual Report for
FY 99 is available on the FIC website at http://www.nih.gov/fic/programs/environ.html.
International
Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG):
In FY 00 one of the six biodiversity consortium grants
for work in Chiapas, Mexico was awarded a no-cost extension to
allow investigators the opportunity to resolve a political
barrier to collection of research materials.
In addition, two projects were awarded competing
supplements to support follow-up work on lead compounds to
treat tuberculosis and leishmaniasis.
Malaria
Research and Training Program:
Five awards were made under this program to provide research
training in collaboration with African institutions in Kenya,
Mali, Uganda, Senegal, and Zimbabwe.
In addition, FIC is working with NIAID to develop a
research training program related to malarial anemia to
complement a new NIAID research program in this area.
RFAs for these programs will be issued this fiscal year
with awards to be made in FY 02.
Network
Meetings:
FIC recently convened a series of network meeting of
grantees and trainees that enable grantees, trainees, and
collaborating colleagues to exchange information on current
projects. Network
meetings were held under the AIDS International Training and
Research Program, Malaria Research and Training Program,
Minority International Research and Training Program,
International Training and Research Program in Emerging
Infectious Diseases, Actions for Building Capacity in Support
of the ICIDR Program ABC/ICIDR, and International Training
Program in Medical Informatics.
Science
Seminars:
The latest in a series of in-house Science Seminars for FIC
staff on priority health issues and related activities took
place on January 4, when Dr. Willo Pequegnat, Center for
Mental Health Research on AIDS, National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH), provided a briefing on the NIMH Collaborative
HIV/STD Prevention Trial, and Internet-Based HIV Prevention
Technology Transfer with World NGOs.
Two previous seminars were held in September and
November. On September 21, AIDS-FIRCA grantees Irene Weber,
Thomas Jefferson University Medical College, and Joszef Tozser,
University Medical School, Debrecen, Hungary, gave a
presentation on their ongoing research - specificity studies
of HIV and HTLV proteases - and shared some insights into the
workings of collaborative arrangements under the FIRCA . On
November 15, Dr. Kate Aultman, NIAID Program Officer for
Vector Biology Research, spoke to FIC staff about the use of
pesticides and public health implications.
Regional
Activities
China:
FIC organized and hosted a U.S.-China Policy Dialogue
on Biotechnology and Biomedicine held December 4-5 at NIH.
The meeting was the second in a ten-year series agreed
upon by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the
National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The first policy forum in this series took place in
Beijing in October 1999.
Participants reviewed areas that had proved productive
in past collaborations as well as new technologies that open
up possibilities for cooperative research. They also considered challenges to collaboration posed by
differing U.S. and Chinese policies on intellectual property
rights, bioethics guidelines for the conduct of clinical
research, and other areas.
Dr.
Allen Holt, Program Officer for East Asia and Pacific, has
been invited to present at the UNESCO National Workshop on
Ethics Related to Biotechnology and Biosafety, April 2-3 in
Guangzhou, China. Dr.
Holt will be speaking on FIC’s activities in bioethics
training and research.
Egypt:
With support from the U.S.-Egypt Joint Science and
Technology Fund, FIC organized three “Grant Writing and
Grants Management” workshops at Helwan University in Cairo,
Assiut Medical School in Assiut, and Suez Canal University in
Ismailia. U.S.
participants included representatives from FIC, the NIH Office
of Extramural Research, NHGRI, and an extramural grantee from
the State University of New York at Buffalo.
FIC,
NCI, and Mansoura University are organizing a workshop on
“The Sustainable Use of Biodiversity in Egypt” in Mansoura,
Egypt, April 3-5, 2001. The
workshop is being held under the auspices of the Joint Science
and Technology Board of the U.S.-Egypt Partnership for
Economic Growth and Development, with presentations by
researchers from the United States, Canada, and Egypt.
Participants will come from the universities of
Mansoura, Suez Canal, Alexandria, South Valley, and The
Mubarak City for Science and Technology.
Latin America and
Caribbean:
The Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT)
and NIH established the Pan American Fellowship (PAF) Program
in 1995 to support post-doctoral research and training for
Mexican scientists in NIH intramural laboratories.
FIC recently opened the PAF program to other qualified
science and technology funding agencies, universities,
research institutes, and other foundations and organizations,
regional and international, in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and
Uruguay. These
agencies will co-share training costs with NIH ICs.
In addition, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
recently joined NIH in supporting scientists and researchers
from lesser-developed countries in Latin America, specifically
Central America, the Andean region, and the Caribbean.
Pan American Symposium on
the Molecular Approach to Human Disease:
Working with the Latin American Network of Biological
Sciences (RELAB), the Latin American Academy of Sciences, and
CONACYT, FIC organized a Pan American Symposium on the
Molecular Approach to Human Disease November 2-4 in Mexico.
Participants included representatives from NIH
institutes and from countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean, as well as scientists and graduate students from
the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama. Among the several collaborative research proposals developed
during the course of the meeting was one to
establish a multi-site Pan American Consortium focusing
on genomic studies of cancer of the uterine cervix in Latin
American populations.
India:
FIC led the development of an NIH-Indian Council of
Medical Research (ICMR) meeting of the Biomedical Research
Policy Forum held October 18-20 in New Delhi, India.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss research
policy issues that create barriers to cooperation between
scientists in the two countries.
These include dual U.S. and Indian scientific review of
grants and other research activities, differing systems of
human subjects protection reviews, and the need for increased
sharing of biomedical research resources. As a result of the meeting, the DHHS Office of Human Research
Protection agreed to review (and subsequently approved) newly
issued ICMR guidelines for human subjects protection; a staff
member of the NIH Center for Scientific Review will return to
India to share additional information about the NIH peer
review system; and FIC will develop a listing of all
repositories and databases freely available to scientists
around the world.
Italy:
FIC, in cooperation with
the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), is organizing an
international workshop on African biodiversity in Rome, Italy,
April 9-11. The
purpose of the workshop is to gather scientists, experts,
industrial partners and policy makers, from Italy, Africa and
the United States, to share information on the current,
state-of-the-art science of discovery and utilization of plant
and marine biodiversity in Africa for the production of new
drugs or products for agricultural use. Another aim of the
workshop is to lay the foundation for developing a Natural
Product Research Network involving Italy (i.e., the CNR and
other Italian institutions and industries), the United States
(including the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups,
or ICBG, sponsored by the FIC), and African laboratories and
Centers of Excellence. Scientists
in the fields of agronomy, plant genetics, phytochemistry, and
pharmacology are invited to
contribute
to the workshop and proposed network.
Expected outcomes of the workshop will be the
identification of a specific project(s) for initial
collaboration and potential funding sources.
National
Cancer Institute
Some NCI
statistics for FY 2000: NCI supported 58 foreign research grants and 9 foreign
research contracts. Also, 126 research grants and 6 research
contracts awarded to U.S. institutions had a foreign
component. The
NCI Office of International Affairs shared in the costs of
supporting 109 Exchange Scientists from 37 countries, for a
total of about 490 person-months.
In addition, 825 foreign scientists visited NCI
laboratories under the NIH Visiting Program.
One of many highlights of research is on prostate
cancer.
Prostate
cancer is the most commonly occurring cancer in U.S. men, and
African American men have the highest prostate cancer rate in
the world. NCI-supported
studies in a number of countries are addressing factors that
seem to influence incidence of prostate cancer.
Studies by
NCI supported investigators at the University of Pennsylvania
are examining the role of genes that regulate the disposition
of testosterone in prostate cancer etiology, and evaluating
whether these genes explain, in part, differences in prostate
cancer rates between African Americans and U.S. Caucasians.
Studies are comparing Ghanaian, Senegalese, African
American, and US Caucasian men.
Inclusion of African populations will provide
information about the possible role of environmental factors.
There is some evidence to suggest that the high
incidence of prostate cancer seen in African‑American
men is also evident in other populations of West African
descent, suggesting the importance of genetic factors.
NCI‑supported investigators from the University of
Pittsburgh are studying a large group of men in Tobago, where
risk of prostate cancer is high, the population is primarily
of West African descent, and there is less admixture than
among African Americans.
NCI
scientists are engaged in a population-based, case–control
study in Shanghai, China, to investigate the reasons for the
extremely low, but increasing, risk of prostate cancer in this
population. The scientists are addressing a variety of
hypotheses related to hormone levels, dietary intake,
anthropometry, and medical practice, using both interviews and biological information. In
addition, the scientists are exploring whether genetic factors
are related to the very low risk of prostate cancer in China.
National
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
The National
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has made its
international research program a high priority for fiscal year
2001. Accordingly,
the Office of International Research (OIR) was created in
February 2001, with the mission to identify promising
international CAM practices, encourage their rigorous
scientific assessment, and promote the development of
effective Cam applications by facilitating international
scientific collaborations.
Dr. Joana
Rosario was named OIR Director Designee (due to the federal
hiring freeze). She
is a neurologist and epidemiologist with international
clinical research experience in several countries and
continents. She
has served at the Mayo Clinic, the Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine, the Neuroepidemiology Branch, NINDS, and the
University of Maryland School of Medicine.
She comes to us from the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke, where she served at the
Office of the Director.
OIR has
established as its top priority the development of a five-year
strategic plan, which is anticipated to be formalized by the
end of this fiscal year.
Meanwhile, OIR is establishing working relationships
with international and national, private and public
institutions to foster international research on complementary
and alternative medicine (CAM).
In the next
two months, OIR will be represented at the Pan American Health
Organization Global Traditional Medicine Action Plan regional
meeting in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Subsequently, OIR will be present at the HIV/AIDS Women
and Children meeting in Gabarone, Botswana. There, a meeting
is anticipated with the Traditional Medicine Officer of the
WHO AFRO Regional Office.
OIR will be also be present at the “Modernization of
Traditional Medicine” meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, a meeting
on “Exploring African Biodiversity for New Natural
Products” in Rome, Italy and at the First Gulf Symposium on
Complementary Medicine in Saudi Arabia.
With the
Fogarty International Center, NCCAM is sponsoring the
International Clinical, Operational and Health Services and
Training Award.
National
Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
THE
AMERICAS
- Six international scientific organizations in addition to
PAHO, NHLBI and major countries in the Americas have endorsed
a new initiative titled “Pan American Hypertension
Initiative” (PAHI), launched by NHLBI and PAHO.
This initiative is designed to develop collaboration
between national programs in hypertension in the Americas.
PAHI will focus on the health problems of an estimated
140 million hypertensives in the region, emphasizing the need
to prevent and control this condition, and its sequelae of
heart attacks, stroke, heart failure, disability and premature
deaths. In
follow-up of PAHI activities, Ministers of Health of countries
of North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean
unanimously endorsed a joint resolution at the Directing
Council meeting at PAHI Headquarters on September 29, 2000.
The resolution gives CVD increased attention in future
public health program sin the Americas, with particular
emphasis on hypertension.
EUROPE
- NHLBI is participating in the planning of an international
conference to be held in Washington in June 2001 on
“Women’s Health in Menopause: Improved Quality of Life.”
The conference will cover a number of areas related to
the health of women, including cancer, cardiovascular disease,
osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.
Several European organizations are also participating
under the leadership of the Giovanni Lorenzini Foundation in
Milan, Italy. A joint international document addressing “Women’s Health
in Menopause” is being developed in preparation for the
meeting.
CANADA
- A 7 member Canadian delegation visited the NHLBI in
February 2001 to meet with the Director and senior NHLBI staff
to discuss strategic planning in heart, lung and blood
diseases. The delegation was headed by the newly appointed scientific
Director of the newly established Canadian Institute of
Circulatory and Respiratory Health (ICRH).
ICRH is one of 13 virtual institutes comprising the
recently established Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Leaders of governmental as well as nongovernmental
organizations were included in the delegation.
The NHLBI already has extensive collaborations with
Canadian scientists participating in NHLBI programs.
CHINA
- A US-PRC joint working meeting will be held in
China in June to finalize joint manuscripts and celebrate
twenty years of successful joint collaboration in
cardiopulmonary research.
Topics for new directions in joint research will also
be explored.
JAPAN
- The NHLBI held a joint US-Japan Symposium on Genetic
Epidemiology of Cardiovascular Disease in January 2001 in
Hawaii. A joint
summary has been signed by the Director, NHLBI, and the
Director, National Cardiovascular Institute in Osaka, Japan,
agreeing on future areas of US-Japan collaboration.
A
Japanese delegation from the Ministry of Health and the
National Cardiovascular Center visited the NHLBI in February
2001 to meet with NHLBI staff to discuss priorities and
strategic planning in cardiovascular disease research
programs.
RUSSIA
- A US-Russia Joint Symposium on Cardiac Arrhythmias will be
held in Washington, D.C., May 23-25, 2001. US
and Russian scientists will exchange information on the latest
advances in research and discuss new areas for scientific
exchanges and joint research projects.
TAIWAN
- US and Taiwanese scientists will be collaborating on
Childhood Asthma. A joint workshop was held in January in
Taiwan. Topics
covered include gene/environment interactions and risk factors
in the development of asthma.
A joint summary outlining priority areas for joint
research has been signed by both sides.
National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Scientific
review of the applications received in response to the NICHD
Global Network for Women’s Children’s Health Research RFA
(HD 00-007) and the complementary FIC International Maternal
and Child Health Research Training (IMCHRT) occurred during
the first week in December 2000.
January Council approved the meritorious applications
recommended by program staff.
It is anticipated that awards will be made for one data
and coordinating center and ten Global Network Research Units
to conduct research in sites located in Asia and Latin
America. The Global Network RFA likely will be reissued in FY
2001 with a focus on Africa and Eastern Europe.
The NICHD
recently completed a questionnaire as part of a Global
Assessment of Child Health and Nutrition, commissioned by the
Global Forum for Health Research.
The assessment will result in a report to be released
in conjunction with the United Nations Special Session on
Children to be held in New York, September 19-21, 2001.
Dr. Robert
Spirtas, Chief, Contraception and Reproductive Health Branch,
NICHD, participated in the World Health Organization’s
Special Panelist Meeting on Epidemiological Research in
Reproductive Health on November 27-29, in Geneva Switzerland.
Africa
The
upcoming NIH conference on “Exploring a Research Agenda for
the Improved Treatment, Care, and Management of HIV-Affected
Women, Infants, and Children in Sub-Saharan Africa,” will be
held March 25-30 in Gaborone, Botswana.
Dr. Yvonne Maddox, Acting Deputy Director of NIH and
Deputy Director of NICHD, will serve as co-chair of the
meeting. This
conference is supported by the NIH Office of AIDS Research,
NICHD, FIC, and other NIH ICs and federal agency co-sponsors.
It is anticipated that this consultation with African
scientists and health care providers will enable NICHD and
other interested research funding organizations to better
focus their scientific activities to help address the many
critical research gaps and needs related to HIV/AIDS in
Sub-Saharan Africa.
Chile
NICHD
co-sponsored the International Symposium on the Newest in
Development Genetics that was held at the Universidad de
Chile, Santiago, January 8-19, 2001.
In addition to helping to organize the symposium, Dr.
Heiner Westphal, Chief, LMGD, NICHD lectured at and
participated in the meeting.
Germany
Dr. Brant
Weinstein, Head, UVO, SDB, LMG, NICHD met with Dr. Stefan
Schulte-Merke at Artemis Pharmaceuticals in Tubingen to
exchange scientific information and to discuss possible
collaborations.
India
The Indo-U.S.
Joint Working Group on Contraception and Reproductive Health
will meet in Rockville, Maryland on April 23-25, 2001.
An associated interim workshop on “Use of Transgenic
Animals in Studies of Reproductive Health” also is planned.
The first meeting of the Indo-U.S. Joint Working Group
on Maternal and Child Health and Human Development will be
held in the United States either in May or June of this year.
The NICHD serves as the Secretariat for both of these
Joint Working Group Programs.
Dr.
Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Chief, UOB, CBMB, NICHD traveled
to Bangalore, India, to participate as the Keynote Speaker in
the Polarity, Membrane Trafficking, Shape and Locomotion
Session of the NCBS Symposium on Cell and Developmental
Biology, held January 9-13, 2001
Mexico
Dr.
Jennifer Read, Medical Officer, Pediatric, Adolescent, and
Maternal AIDS Branch, Center for Research for Mothers and
Children, presented an update on “Current Research and
Concepts in Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV”
at the IX Interamerican Pediatric Infectious Diseases Congress
and the XIII Latinamerica Symposium on Pediatric AIDS.
The meetings were held in Mexico City November
29-December 2, 2000.
National
Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
International
Collaborative Oral Health Agenda
An
international conference to develop research agendas in the
areas of craniofacial genetics, genetic/environment
interaction, and treatment was held in Geneva, November 6-10,
2000, as part of the NIDCR-WHO project to help support
international collaborative research in craniofacial
anomalies. More
than 80 researchers attended the meeting from every continent.
A similar meeting to address CFA prevention research
will be held in Utah in May 2001.
Collaboration
with Other Organizations
As a
follow-up to the Bioethics Conference held last October in
Bangkok, NIDCR staff are working with Fogarty to develop a
symposium for the Annual Meeting of the International
Association for Dental Research.
This symposium, entitled “International Collaborative
Research: Ethical
and Legal Issues” will be held on June 29 in Chiba, Japan.
NIDCR is
contributing financial and technical collaborating support to
WHO’s Country Area Profile Project to enhance the collection
and dissemination of oral health related data from WHO member
States. Malmo
University in Sweden has the lead in implementing this
activity in conjunction with WHO Oral Health staff in Geneva.
Drs. Lois
Cohen serves on the DHHS Data Council workgroup on health
systems, which is examining issues related to measuring
performance of health systems on an international basis.
In addition to DHHS agencies, USAID and the World Bank
are included as working members of this group.
NIDCR staff
have been invited to participate as WHO Experts in a
consultation meeting on Oral Health Promotion, Oral Disease
Management as an Essential Component of Noncommunicable
Disease Prevention and Control.
This meeting will help to set program priorities for
the WHO Oral Health Program.
The meeting is scheduled for Geneva, April 2-4.
Dr. Lois
Cohen is co-author of a panel report on Global Oral Health,
which is part of the American Dental Association’s Future of
Dentistry Project. That
document is in its final stages of editing.
Dr. Lois
Cohen gave a special plenary lecture at the Annual Session of
the American Dental Education Association, March 4 in Chicago.
Her presentation was entitled, “Gender Issues Go
Global.”
NIDCR staff
met with representatives of the Taipei Economic and Cultural
Representative Office in the US, as well as the Dean of the
College of Public Health, National Taiwan University,
concerning collaborative support of research on oral cancer.
NIDCR staff
will participate in the first Global Congress in Dental
Education, to be held March 28 - April 1 in Prague, Czech
Republic. Dr.
Kevin Hardwick will serve on a workgroup looking at Research
and the Dental Student.
NIDCR is
organizing an international symposium on “Oral Cancer
Prevention: Gene and Environmental Influences,” to be held
during the 7th World Congress on Preventive
Dentistry, April 24-27 in Beijing, China.
Other
NIDCR
continued its work with a contractor to produce a video
showcasing the Institute’s international research agenda and
international oral health research opportunities.
The film will be used to promote interest among the
scientific community in these areas of global need.
Film crews have traveled to Niger to film noma research
activity there, and to the Philippines to document cleft lip
and palate field research by NIDCR investigators.
NIDCR
is organizing a David E. Barmes Lecture in International
Health, in memory of Dr. David Barmes, who passed away January
13. The lecture
is scheduled for the afternoon of October 22, 2001, and is
intended to be of interest to a broad multi-disciplinary,
trans-NIH audience.
Updated May 2003
|
