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Brief Description:

The Fogarty International Center has launched a global health program to fight chronic diseases.

Transcript:

Akinso: The Fogarty International Center has launched a global health program to fight chronic diseases.

Glass: We have a new program called the Millennium Promise Awards.

Akinso: Dr. Roger Glass is the Director of the Fogarty International Center.

Glass: They're intended to encourage scientific organizations interested in global health to engage in research aimed at these lifestyle diseases that are now emerging in the developing world.

Akinso: The program has a 1.5 million dollar a year grant to fund domestic and overseas training of researchers to fight chronic diseases in developing nations. Dr. Glass explains the intent of the program.

Glass: This program is aimed at strengthening research capacity in the developing world in developing a pipeline of young investigators in the developing world who can look at these problems as they appear in their own setting and begin to address them.

Akinso: About 60 percent of all deaths worldwide are attributable to chronic diseases and 80 percent of them occur in low- and middle-income countries, according to the World Health Organization. Dr. Glass says that in addition to cancer, stroke, lung diseases, environmental factors, and obesity, the program will address a number of unique research approaches to combat chronic diseases worldwide.

Glass: Many of these diseases will require different approaches to research. Research on nutrition-clearly a long standing factor, behavioral changes, research that involves policies around issues such as smoking, health economics, environmental health risk factors and urban planning, to increase exercise-is an example. These are areas that we don't normally associate with the bench research for which NIH is world famous.

Akinso: Grantees would receive funding of up to 220-thousand dollars a year for up to five years, with planning grants allocated up to 27-thousand dollars each year for up to two years. For more information, visit www.fic.nih.gov. This is Wally Akinso at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.