from UW Medicine by Tom Furtwangler
As part of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a massive effort to combat infectious diseases and strengthen health systems worldwide, the U.S. government has awarded a $300 million five-year cooperative agreement to the University of Washington’s International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH). The award became effective April 1 and focuses on health training in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
I-TECH/Tom Furtwangler
At a public hospital in Nampula, Mozambique, a trainee in I-TECH’s HIV course for Tecnicos de Medicine sees a pediatric patient under the guidance of an experienced clinician.
I-TECH was selected for the “International AIDS Education and Training Center” cooperative agreement from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. The program was funded as a part of PEPFAR, the cornerstone and largest component of the U.S. President’s Global Health Initiative. The Health Initiative is a $63 billion, six-year effort to help people in the world’s poorest countries, most of it to bolster existing programs. The selection was made through a competitive federal grant application process.
I-TECH was founded in 2002 in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and now has more than 700 employees worldwide working through offices in 10 countries and projects in more than 20 countries throughout Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
The principal investigator of I-TECH is Dr. King K. Holmes, the William H. Foege Endowed Chair of the UW Department of Global Health. The director is Dr. Ann Downer, senior lecturer in the Department of Global Health, and the co-director is Dr. Michael Reyes, professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
I-TECH/Julia Sherburne
An outreach worker arrives for a home visit in a rural community near Dessie, Ethiopia. I-TECH pioneered the use of case management and outreach workers for public sector AIDS care, a program that has since been adopted by the Ethiopia Ministry of Health.
I-TECH works with local governments and institutions to develop skilled health care workers and strong national health systems in the resource-limited countries where it operates. The term “health systems” refers broadly to the interrelated governance, finance, staffing, infrastructure, information, education, products, technologies and services that come together to make high-quality healthcare possible.
“I am extremely pleased that UW has been selected for this far-reaching and competitive award,” said Holmes. “I-TECH has built a strong reputation as a leader in the practice of health systems strengthening within the U.S. government’s global PEPFAR initiative, and we look forward to working with our 60 partners around the world to continue to expand that work. “
Holmes said I-TECH projects have played a key role in delivering life-saving care to millions of people in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean region. With this award, Holmes said I-TECH can continue to connect the scholarly, clinical and educational resources of the University of Washington and UCSF to the global effort to improve health systems and clinical care in under-resourced countries where the needs are most acute.
I-TECH/Julia Sherburne
An I-TECH clinical mentor discusses a case with a doctor at the district hospital in Mekele, Ethiopia. I-TECH Ethiopia supports thirteen teams of clinical mentors who provide on-site support at public sector HIV care facilities across three large regions of the country.
The exact amounts of funding that will flow through this federal cooperative agreement each year are determined country-by-country through negotiations with the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s Global AIDS Program office in each country where I-TECH works. The award ceiling of $60 million per year is consistent with the levels of funding I-TECH has received in the last three years (FY 2008: $48.5 million; FY 2009: $53 million, FY 2010: $58.5 million).
Work performed by I-TECH under federal cooperative agreements since the program’s inception in 2002 reflects the evolution of the federal PEPFAR foreign aid initiative launched in 2002. The initiative has evolved from emergency AIDS relief to a longer-term investment in health systems strengthening.
While I-TECH initially focused on training health care workers about HIV and AIDS, it soon began to address broader capacity development efforts. These include designing clinical mentoring and decision support systems; strengthening pre-service training institutions; improving and implementing laboratory and medical information systems; and training and mentoring leaders and managers.
The cornerstone of this work is collaboration with local government and institutional partners in the countries where I-TECH works.