GH Research

• Building on our 2008 NIH Fogarty Framework grant award titled, "Global Health in Changing Environments," to inspire enquiry and discovery by embedding research in global clinical and educational activities of students and faculty
• Stimulating and coordinating collaborative grant-writing and research projects
• Facilitating global health projects by appointing a global health representative to the Institutional Review Board (IRB)
• Connecting researchers with the NIH Fogarty International Center
• Hosting global health research symposia and lecture series
• Facilitating and providing joint resources to support collaborative global health research projects

NIH AWARDS the Global Health Center A GRANT TO RESEARCH NODDING SYNDROME

OHSU’s Global Health Center announces the award of a grant from the NIH National Institute for Neurological Disease and Stroke (NINDS) to research Nodding Syndrome in East Africa.  Awarded:  August 1, 2012.

Nodding Syndrome is a mysterious brain seizure disorder that has affected thousands of children in South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.  In addition to involuntary head nodding, which often begins upon eating, affected children are often short for age, undeveloped, and heavily infected with worm-like parasites, one of which is known to cause River Blindness.  Nodding Syndrome begins with head nodding but commonly advances to major convulsions and mental deterioration. Affected children may be poorly nourished, suffer from community stigma, show signs of physical neglect, and may have behavioral problems that cause them to wander aimlessly. Children who suffer from convulsions can fall into fires or drown in rivers.  Read more ...

News report -  WHO meeting on Nodding Syndrome, Kampala, August 2012.

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

HRSA awarded a grant approaching $1.5million to the OHSU School of Nursing (Peggy Wros, PI), in partnership with the School of Medicine and the Global Health Center

Title: Nurse Education, Practice, Quality, and Retention - Interprofessional Collaborative Practice

The purpose of this project is to create a collaborative model for clinical practice and education It will expand community partnerships to create Neighborhood Centers for Academic and Practice Partnerships (NCAPP) with a Nurse Faculty in Residence working with students and agency staff to address population health. 

The Global Health Center's interprofessional Community Health and Education Exchange (iCHEE), led by GHC Instructor Valerie Palmer, will provide health screening services for the NCAPPs, providing opportunities for interprofessional and cross-cultural education. The faculty-in-residence will refer clients to partner primary care homes in the neighborhood for collaborative case management.

Recent OHSU GHC publications

Recent OHSU GHC publications resulting from research on diseases outlined in the Poison That Waits documentary.  View BBC documentary, opposite.

• Spencer P.S., Fry R.C., Kisby, G.E.  Unraveling 50-year-old clues linking neurodegeneration and cancer to cycad toxins: are microRNAs common mediators?  Frontiers in Non-Coding RNA.  Read abstract and/or whole article
• Spencer P.S., Palmer, V.S.  Interrelationships of undernutrition and neurotoxicity: Food for thought and research attention. NeuroToxicology, 33:606-16, 2012.
• Kisby, G.E., Palmer, V., Lasarev, M., Fry, R., Iordanov, M., Magun, E., Samson, L. Spencer, P.S. Does the cycad genotoxin MAM implicated in Guam ALS-PDC induce disease-relevant changes in mouse brain that includes olfaction? Communicative & Integrative Biology, 4:731-4, 2011.
• Kisby, G.E., Spencer, P.S. Is neurodegenerative disease a long-latency response to early-life genotoxin exposure? Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2011 Oct;8(10):3889-921. Epub 2011 Sep 29.
• Kisby, G.E., Fry, R.C., Lasarev, M.R., Bammler, T.K., Beyer, R.P., Churchwell, M., Doerge D.R., Meira, L.B., Palmer, V.S., Ramos-Crawford, A-L., Ren, X, Sullivan, R.C., Kavanagh, T.J., Samson, L.D., Zarbl, H., Spencer, P.S. The cycad genotoxin MAM modulates brain cellular pathways involved in neurodegenerative disease and cancer in a DNA damage-linked manner. PLoS One 6(6):e20911. Epub 2011 Jun 23, 2011.  

The International Compilation of Human Research Standards

The International Compilation of Human Research Standards is a listing of over 1,000 laws, regulations, and guidelines on human subjects protections in over 100 countries and from several international organizations. Many of the listings embed hyperlinks to the source document. This Compilation was developed for use by researchers, IRBs/Research Ethics Committees, sponsors, and others who are involved in human subjects research around the world.

The 2012 edition features new sections that enumerate the laws, regulations, and/or guidelines pertaining to Research Injury, for which 53 standards were identified. Two new countries are included in the 2012 Edition: Barbados and Haiti. As in the past, the 2012 edition updates and expands the human research standards in many other countries based on information provided by in-country experts.

HIV Research Discovery

Louis Picker, MD's OHSU lab at the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute was able to generate an immune response that was effective at the mucosa, where HIV is first encountered, and thereby prevent infection in 4/12 monkeys challenged with SIV (monkey HIV). They did this by using as vaccine vector CMV (a relatively benign herpesvirus) that was engineered to encoded a few SIV proteins. This is a big improvement over previous vaccine models that generally could not stop infection but kept the virus level low (if at all). Nature Medicine Summary, and whole article.