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Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Selects Mailman School of Public Health as Research Partner for Large-Scale Healthcare Program in Tanzania and Ghana

Grant of $14.7 million awarded to Mailman School for strengthening health systems serving 3.5 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa

August 21, 2009 — The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s (DDCF) African Health Initiative has selected the Mailman School of Public Health as one of four research partnerships to design and implement large-scale primary healthcare programs in sub-Saharan Africa, totaling roughly $44 million over five to seven years. The DDCF grant to the Mailman School in the amount of $14.7 million is to develop an exchange of health system innovations between Tanzania and Ghana, two countries that are at the forefront of health development in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Mailman School of Public Health was selected by the DDCF’s African Health Initiative out of more than 100 initial applicants. The African Health Initiative seeks to strengthen health systems by supporting partnerships that link implementation research and workforce training directly to the large-scale delivery of integrated primary healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Tanzania, the Tanzania Ghana Health Partnership (TGHP) will utilize Ghana’s community health service model and adapt the country's strategy for training health extension workers and providing community-based health services. Ghana achieved extraordinary success in reducing childhood mortality by mobilizing rural communities to develop local health systems and stationing nurses in these villages. Child mortality was reduced by over half in only three years, and subsequently the experiment was successfully replicated in eight additional districts.

In Ghana, the TGHP will strengthen district-level capacity to plan and set priorities using locally obtained burden of disease and cost-effectiveness data in order to ensure delivery of the country's integrated primary healthcare package. Tanzania has played a key role in the TGHP, and Ghana will be utilizing Tanzania’s district health planning and management model.

Health service models in Tanzania and Ghana have been proven to work, both achieving success according to UN Millennium Development Goal targets with contrasting models. The TGHP will test the proposition that both countries can accelerate this success by combining these models into a common strategy for improving health and survival.

“Tanzania and Ghana are two examples of successful health development and have been highly lauded within the international development community,” says Jim Phillips, PhD, professor of clinical Population and Family Health at the Mailman School, and principal investigator and director of the Mailman School’s initiative. “However, health systems in each country remain fragile, and as a result, access, quality, and cost of primary healthcare remains a challenge to the population of both countries.”

To build on the TGHP initiative, the DDCF is bringing together teams of researchers from the Mailman School of Public Health, Swiss Tropical Institute, University of Ghana, and Ifakara Health Institute of Tanzania with teams of government health service implementers.

“This process of transferring successful innovations will encompass all functional areas of health systems, including manpower, communications, logistics, planning, resource management, and leadership, and thus help accelerate progress towards Millennium Development Goal targets,” Dr. Phillips continues. “Collaboration and involvement of the Ghana Health Service and the Tanzania Ministry of Health will ensure that successes in health systems development achieved during this program will inform national policies, with systems in place for sustainability beyond the duration of the TGHP.”

“We are grateful to the many experts and advisors whose input has helped inform the African Health Initiative, and we look forward to sharing what we learn and to collaborating with other partners in the global health community in the coming years,” said Elaine Gallin, director of the Medical Research Program at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

“We are proud to support this challenging but critical work,” said Ed Henry, president of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. “We hope the foundation’s grants will provide the funding and flexibility the four partnerships need to address some of the delivery gaps that will improve the healthcare systems in the regions where they are working.”

The Mailman School and each of the other three organizations will receive grants ranging from $8 million to $15 million over five to seven years. The other DDCF grants will support projects to improve health outcomes in the Sofala Province of Mozambique, rural Rwanda, and Zambia.
About the Mailman School of Public Health
The only accredited school of public health in New York City and among the first in the nation, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting millions of people locally and globally. The Mailman School is the recipient of some of the largest government and private grants in Columbia University’s history. Its more than 1000 graduate students pursue master’s and doctoral degrees, and the School’s 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as infectious and chronic diseases, health promotion and disease prevention, environmental health, maternal and child health, health over the life course, health policy, and public health preparedness. www.mailman.columbia.edu