School of Public Health Faculty Receive Grants to Advance Global Health Initiatives

ATLANTA—Two Georgia State University School of Public Health faculty members have received funding through a new grants program that will expand the scope and impact of their global partnerships.

Launched this semester in alignment with the school’s Vision 2027 Strategic Plan, the Global Health Initiatives Grants Program was created to support a range of faculty activities focused on education, research, applied projects and/or partnership initiatives. The program is funded by the Dean’s Office and administered by Sarah McCool, Clinical Associate Professor and Director of Global Health Initiatives in the School of Public Health.

The faculty members who received funding and their projects are:

• Lucy Popova, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences, “Postdoctoral Mentorship in Global Tobacco Research”
• Christine Stauber, Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences, “Wastewater Surveillance for Arboviruses in Brazil”

“Dr. Popova and Dr. Stauber exemplify our school’s dedication to building local and global partnerships that create extraordinary learning opportunities for students while advancing health equity,” said Dean and Professor Rodney Lyn. “Our school is building on its strong record of international engagement through innovative projects such as theirs.”

Postdoctoral Mentorship in Global Tobacco Research
Popova will pair GSU Master of Public Health (MPH) students with postdoctoral mentors around the globe for a semester-long applied practice experience project. The students will become part of the research team and carry out research activities that create the opportunity to become a co-author on a publication and/or present results at a scientific conference. Mentors are current and former postdoctoral fellows in GSU’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Global Tobacco Research, which is funded by the CDC Foundation.

The program will recruit up to 12 MPH students over a two-year period to work with postdoctoral fellows from countries that include Bangladesh, China, The Gambia, Republic of Georgia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Wastewater Surveillance for Arboviruses in Brazil
Stauber will lead a project that seeks to increase understanding of the ability to use wastewater to measure dengue virus infections and gather data that lays the foundation for larger grant-funded projects.

Longer-term outcomes include the opportunity to build collaborations that will generate additional opportunities for environmental sampling and field-based epidemiology for faculty and students from GSU and the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, where the sample processing will take place.  Her program partners are Guilherme Ribeiro at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Federico Costa at the Federal University of Bahia, and Joe Brown and Kevin Zhu at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.