1. UCSF East Africa Interest Group
• An “incubator” to foster campus-wide, cross-disciplinary collaborations in the region
• Develop links at the intersection of key vertical “pillars” (disease focus) and horizontal program
areas and identify opportunities for collaboration, develop ideas for joint projects (e.g. RFAs)
Proposed Format:
• Bimonthly workshops (90 minutes – 2 hours), for a total of five (5) per year
• Topical focus on cross-disciplinary themes – e.g. Implementation Science, Translational Research
• Strive to maintain balance between countries, types of research, HIV/non-HIV focus
Proposed topics for 2013:
Biospecimen Banking
• Growing interest in standardizing collections, migrating data from separate databases and
refrigerators to central UC bank, state-of-the-art archiving, and developing in-country banks
• Opportunity for translational research, connect lab-based researchers to existing specimens
• Tentative workshop date: March 12, 2013!
Educational Programs
• Leveraging FIC programs (Global Health Fellows and Scholars/GloCal), others
• Value of twinning programs, residencies in-country, Young Investigators Conference
Sustainable East Africa Research on Community Health (SEARCH)
• Operational research involving multiple disciplines, non-health related outputs (economics,
education, agriculture), and opportunity to measure collateral impacts (MCH, TB)
• Huge cohort (220K) and long duration (7 years) provides I.S. “scaffolding” and infrastructure
to conduct community-level effectiveness research and non-traditional clinical trials
Non-HIV
• To include Neglected Tropical Diseases, cancer, mental health, CVD, emergency medicine
• 5-6 priorities as set forth by WHO
Engaging Other Disciplines to Address Gaps and Build Capacity
• New technologies

2. • Policy research
• Drug discovery
• Economics, modeling
• BSSR
EAIG Planning Committee:
• 2013 Members: Craig Cohen (chair), Grant Dorsey, Roland Gosling, Peter Hunt, Teri Reynolds,
Starley Shade/Edwin Charlebois, Stefanie Sowinski, Natalie Tomitch, Katherine Van Loon