Transformative Investment

Because we are a small organization with limited funds, we leverage our investment with in-kind support and powerful partnerships.

Before we fund a project, we ask:

• Leverage – Can a modest amount of money and the right team make a real difference?
• Originality – Is this a new problem or a new approach?
• Collaboration – Can our resources stimulate new relationships?

Some of the Institute’s recent collaborations include:

Research on Social Determinants of Health

Since the seminal observations of Sir Michael Marmot beginning in the 1980s, there has been a growing awareness that the complex of influences known as the social determinants dwarf modern medicine as influencers of health and disease.  Epigenetics, the science of how the environment loosely construed writes itself upon the gene, thus influencing gene expression and subsequent phenotypic manifestations, provides an explanation of how the cumulative effect of the environment can make itself felt in gene expression. As a consequence, a bright and straight line can be drawn connecting influences as disparate as income disparities, race, early childhood education and job stress to health and disease. From a public health perspective, this is becoming more significant as the spectrum of disease worldwide shifts from acute infection and trauma to chronic, non-communicable disease (CNCD). Even the large classification of CNCD is muddied by the recognition that these illnesses are not separate and distinct but rather overlap and indeed may share common mechanisms.
It is for these reasons that understanding the interaction of external factors and gene regulation is key to crafting a solution to the epidemic of chronic disease–and that is where the Institute’s research focus lies.

Collaborative Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases

This program supports the building of a collaborative research infrastructure and community IRB (institutional review board) to expand capacity for ethical research with human and animal subjects in the Caribbean. The eastern Dominican Republic is an epicenter of emerging infectious diseases, such as chikungunya, zika, and febrile diseases of unknown origin, which are beginning to impact the United States. Suddenly becoming a region that is strategically important to researchers in the developed world can be problematic for a developing nation. We believe that having a locally developed research infrastructure for review and monitoring of human subjects research is an important step for the local community to take in order to be a full partner in such research. Our partners in this project include: Clínica de Familia, UTMB, Universidad Central del Este, Hospital Buen Samaritano, and the Dominican Ministry of Health.

Communications Infrastructure in Amazonia

A collaboration that integrates community, climatologic, and health data into a single electronic tool for tracking, predicting, and analyzing health data in resource-constrained environments. This project is creating a unique environment developed and tested in collaboration with communities, which will yield a comprehensive, contemporary picture of a community’s health.

In emerging economies, seasonal climatic variations profoundly affect public health, food and water supplies, and access to care. We are developing novel climate indicators that aid in maintaining a community’s health using mobile phone technology. The mobile phone based tool combines a shared health record, which increases the value of each individual clinical visit, with macro environmental analysis, which provides predictive capacity. The final product will be an end-to-end comprehensive community health solution.

Nutrition Programs for At-Risk Families in Lima, Perú

Promoting nutritional treatment of malnourished children. El Comedor, a clinic in Lima, in partnership with the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, works to improve the nutritional status of malnourished children under 3 years of age through an educational program that helps parents and caregivers learn to prepare a well-balanced diet on a minimal budget and, in turn, disseminate this education throughout the community.

Basic Research

Basic health research supported by the Institute and its partners primarily centers on omics. Omics is a collective term for the molecular pathways that make up cell functions, where each pathway is named according to the function that it subserves. Transcriptomics refers to the components of transcription, metabolomics refers to metabolism, and so on. The Institute is supporting research into our fundamental understanding of these interactions of the cell, genes, and the environment, as well as early development of non-invasive sensors that can analyze sources of specimen known to reflect these omics changes, including urine, plasma, saliva, exhaled breath, sweat, and the tear film.

Education

Research Fellowships. One of the most important roles of the Institute is to support the work of early-career researchers, trainees, and students. Work funded by the Institute helps provide real-world, translational research training for research fellows at the University of Houston, Rice University, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, UTMB, the University of North Carolina, and medical students at UTMB and Columbia.

Continuing Education. We are annual co-sponsors of the UTMB Global Health Education Symposium; co-sponsors of the 2017 Pan-American Community Ethics Committee Symposium to be held in Lima, Perú; and sponsor of a meeting of thought-leaders in the social determinants of health, planned for 2017.

Global Education. Through the UTMB program in Global Health Education and the Clinica de Familia in the Dominican Republic, the Institute supports research and education all over the globe for students, fellows, and graduate students.