About
The Wellcome Trust's Centres for Global Health Research are located at the University of Cambridge, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for the Bloomsbury Universities, University of Liverpool in partnership with University of Glasgow, Imperial College London and University of Sussex. The Wellcome Trust has committed more than £3m to these Centres over five years (commencing in 2013). Centres for Global Health Research are intended to support researchers working in public health and tropical medicine to develop their careers, and foster interchange between institutions in the UK and those based in low- and middle-income countries.
Scientific infrastructure, research training and mentorship are often weak and under-resourced in many parts of Africa, thus contributing to a failure to apply modern technologies and medical advances to the health challenges still facing much of the continent. The Wellcome Trust-Cambridge Centre for Global Health Research (WT-CCGHR), established in 2013 (to 2019), is therefore capitalising on the extensive basic biomedical and health-related research capacity across many departments and research institutes at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and using these to support research capacity building and knowledge exchange partnerships with African universities and institutes.
As examples, the best young African researchers interested in building an academic career in health-related disciplines are being carefully matched to Cambridge and African mentors who can guide them in the writing, planning and presentational skills needed to compete successfully for external funds.
The WT-CCGHR is of great benefit to UK investigators too. The best clinical and biomedical researchers in Cambridge who are thought to have exceptional ability to carry out independent research programmes in Africa (e.g. in health services research and basic biomedical science in disease areas of LMIC importance) will be offered clinical intermediate and senior fellowships (as appropriate) that will provide them with relevant support in a wide range of clinical and scientific disciplines.
The WT-CCGHR is also helping them to establish collaborative partnerships with African researchers. The WT-CCGHR will establish basic, intermediate and senior level Visiting Scientist fellowships in public health and tropical medicine to offer training/mentorship/collaborative research (in Cambridge) to high-calibre investigators and research leaders and clinical scientists from African institutions (particularly our existing partners in the Wellcome Trust-funded THRiVE and MUII Programmes in East Africa).
People
Centre Grant PI / Director
- Professor David Dunne, PI Dept Pathology, University of Cambridge
Centre Grant Co-applicants
- Professor Nelson Sewankambo, ex-Principal, Makerere University College of Health Sciences
- Professor Ken Smith, Head, Dept of Medicine, University of Cambridge (CID)
- Professor Duncan Maskell, Head, School of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge (CID)
- Professor James Wood, Head, Dept of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge (CID)
- Professor Derek Smith, Director, WHO Coordinating Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Dept of Zoology, University of Cambridge (CID)
- Professor Nick Wareham, Head, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge (CID)
- Professor Martin Roland CBE, Institute of Public Health, University of Cambridge
- Professor Stephen Bentley, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (CID)
- Professor Gordon Dougan, Head, Pathogen Genomics, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (CID)
- Professor John Danesh, Head, Dept Public Health & Primary Care, University of Cambridge
Advisory Board for the WT-CCGHR
The WR-CCGHR has a broad African health research remit, and we are therefore very pleased to have in place an expert quarter to comment, criticize and advise on the University of Cambridge's wider ideas, plans and performance, in relation to supporting African researchers. They are:
- Professor Potiano Kaleebu (Director MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS and the Head of MRC-UVRI Basic Sciences Programme)
- Professor Daniel Colley (Director of the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, University of Georgia)
- Professor Sir Brian Greenwood (Professor of Clinical Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK)
- Professor Steve Tollman (Director: MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa)