Message from the Director Dr. Roger I. Glass

Message from the Director Dr. Roger I. Glass

The Fogarty International Center at NIH has had a rich and varied legacy since its establishment in 1968. As we mark our 50th year, it is appropriate that we both celebrate our many accomplishments and consider how best to tackle the new global health challenges of the 21st century.

In our first decade, our infancy, Fogarty served as a conference center for global health policy discussions and a convener of outstanding scientists from around the world to build collaborations with U.S. investigators. In the 1980s, as the extent of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic became clear, we began our first institutional extramural grant program, the AIDS International Training and Research Program or AITRP. Fogarty developed a model of partnering U.S. and foreign institutions in low- and middle-income countries to train the next generation of young investigators, to build a research base in areas where this was lacking, with the infrastructure required to conduct ethical, groundbreaking research.

This approach has become the hallmark of Fogarty programs - taking science where the problems are and building local research capacity to solve them. The scientists who were first trained through our programs have become world leaders on the front lines in the battle to staunch the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS through innovative research, in collaboration with U.S. investigators, and with additional support from many others at NIH and beyond. The return on investment in people, partnerships and policies has truly changed the world.

More recently, this model has been extended beyond infectious diseases to chronic, noncommunicable diseases and disciplines critical to advancing the global health agenda from every specialty of the medical and health sciences - including areas not traditionally considered part of global health - such as economics, law, business, architecture, engineering and others.

Fogarty remains the smallest center at NIH with what is perhaps the broadest goal - investing to build the next generation of leaders in biomedical research and supporting training to make them productive collaborators who can contribute to discoveries that improve health globally, as well as in the U.S.

For the last 50 years, Fogarty’s focus has been on cultivating partnerships that advance science for global health. On behalf of all of our staff and our alumni, we thank you for your continued support.

Warm regards,

Roger I. Glass, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Fogarty International Center
Associate Director for Global Health Research, NIH

Fogarty at 50:
Advancing science for global health since 1968

Image
Cover - Fogarty at 50

Published April 2018

Image
Fogarty at 50

  • How do Americans benefit from global health research?
  • Introduction
  • Research training at all career stages
  • Congressman John Edward Fogarty
  • A brief history
  • Sparking a scientific revolution to address the HIV/AIDS crisis
  • Promoting bioethics to protect lives in service to research
  • Advancing research through technology
  • Constructing a multidisciplinary framework for research
  • Cultivating the next generation of global health leaders
  • Exploring natural products to discover new treatments and cures
  • Making implementation science a priority
  • Training to meet the needs of the shifting disease burden
  • Including brain disorders in the global health research agenda
  • Protecting the environment and ensuring worker safety
  • Reducing death and disability from trauma and injury
  • Lowering tobacco consumption through research
  • Transforming African medical education
  • Modeling disease trends and predicting spread of outbreaks
  • Promoting science diplomacy for global health
  • Studying global health science and policy
  • Expanding Fogarty’s reach with NIH co-funding