NIH News Release
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Fogarty International Center
for Advanced Study in the Health Sciences

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, November 30, 2001

Contact: Irene Edwards
(301) 496-2075

Fogarty International Center Announces New Research Training Program for AIDS and Tuberculosis

National Institutes of Heath, Bethesda, Maryland — On World AIDS Day, the Fogarty International Center (FIC) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announces a new capacity building program to provide extended support for collaborative, multidisciplinary, international clinical research training in developing countries where AIDS and tuberculosis are significant problems. FIC, with 10 NIH partners and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as co-sponsors, has issued a call for the development of research training proposals for the new International Clinical, Operational, and Health Services Research Training Award for AIDS and Tuberculosis (ICOHRTA-AIDS/TB). The current combined financial commitment from FIC and its partners is approximately $20 million over the first five years of the program.

"This program is an integral and critical component of a comprehensive global strategy of the NIH to address the needs of the millions of people suffering from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and related conditions in resource-poor areas," said FIC Director Gerald T. Keusch, M.D. on behalf of the ICOHRTA-AIDS/TB partners. "The NIH Office of AIDS Research has made international AIDS research a top priority, and has dramatically increased its investment in research and training portfolios in developing countries. The ICOHRTA-AIDS/TB supports this NIH priority." Keusch added, "This is a long-term commitment that will strengthen the developing country research capacity to move the benefits of promising scientific advances to those most in need."

This effort establishes a comprehensive training program that will enhance infrastructure in-country to conduct integrated clinical, operational, and health services research. The program will support training at the Master's, Ph.D., post-doctoral, and allied health professional level and will be implemented in two phases. The first phase will consist of one-year planning grants to eligible institutions in developing countries. The second phase of the program will consist of five-year cooperative agreements for comprehensive sustained support to both the developing country institution and a linked U.S. or other developed country partner, including scientists affiliated with the program's U.S. government co-sponsors.

The ICOHRTA-AIDS/TB program builds on the leadership and skills that have been developed through the FIC AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP). Over the past 14 years, AITRP has been instrumental in building research capacity in the developing world by providing HIV/AIDS-related biomedical and behavioral research training to scientists and health professionals from developing countries. It has enabled U.S. schools of medicine, public health, and nursing to train more than 2,000 scientists from over 100 countries, including many at the Master's and Ph.D. level. AITRP has, over time, built a strong foundation of research scientists, health professionals, and policy makers who are trained to respond to the challenges of HIV/AIDS and TB in their country and to function in an increasingly technical global environment.

FIC led the development of this program in close collaboration with NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Office of AIDS Research (OAR), Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR), and Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH), as well as the CDC. The ICOHRTA-AIDS/TB complements the international research and prevention efforts of the co-sponsors, for example NIAID's Comprehensive International Program for Research on AIDS (CIPRA), the NIMH Collaborative HIV/STD Prevention Trial, the NICHD African Partnerships Program, and the CDC Global AIDS Program.

This program announcement will be open for competition for at least three years. The program announcement for the comprehensive follow-up program will be issued early in calendar year 2002.

Initial applications for planning grants are due by March 19, 2002, and the deadline for receipt of Letters of Intent is January 20, 2002. The program announcement for the ICOHRTA-AIDS/TB can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/2001/01.11.30/index.html.

FIC is a critical component of the international research effort of the NIH. It promotes and supports scientific discovery internationally and mobilizes resources to reduce disparities in global health. NIH is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Press releases, fact sheets, and other FIC-related materials are available at http://www.nih.gov/fic.

The Fogarty International Center is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.