The UC Berkeley School of Public Health (SPH) is excited to announce the launch of the Gilead Fellowship for the Advancement of Global Public Health for Spring 2019. The new initiative is made possible thanks to the generous support from Gilead Sciences, Inc. and will be run by the SPH Center for Global Public Health (CGPH), whose multi-faceted mission includes the development of global health education and training initiatives for the UCB campus and beyond.
This exciting new capacity-building program will provide support to five international fellows from developing countries who will take on coursework towards a two-year Masters in Public Health (MPH) degree at SPH with a concentration in Global Health. Gilead Fellows will focus on critical areas of global health including infectious diseases, vaccinology, and epidemiology.
The pilot effort will be offered as a hybrid training program where during year one, Gilead Fellows will participate in the School’s award-winning online MPH program, taking online classes such as research methods, biostatistics, epidemiology, and the foundations of global public health, virtually from their home country. During the second year, the Gilead Fellows will come to the United States for a full-time summer internship/field placement in the Bay Area, followed by two semesters of in-person coursework on the UC Berkeley campus. Bringing their own data sets and research interests, Fellows will work alongside SPH faculty to address the myriad health challenges facing their country, from epidemics such as HIV/AIDS to other infectious diseases such as TB, Hepatitis B and C.
A highlight of the Gilead Fellowship program will be the series of programming and field trips to an array of partner organizations in the Bay Area, community building activities, skills-building workshops, and mentoring and networking events throughout their year abroad in Berkeley. This program element is meant to help foster knowledge exchange and local-global collaboration building, and will give opportunities for the global scholars to learn from Bay Area-based industry and sectors engaged in advancing global health.
This new public-private partnership joins other existing Global Health-focused fellowship programs at the UC Berkeley campus including the Morris Fellowship for the Advancement of Public Health in India — made possible thanks to SPH alumna Anjali Morris, M.D. (MPH ’86) and the Morris Family Fund — the Global Health Equity Scholars Fellowships (GHES), the Minority Health/Global Health Disparities Research Fellowships (MHIRT), and the CGPH Research Fellowship. SPH also supports various international training and exchange programs, including new partnerships with several Universities in China and Hong Kong.
The application for the Gilead Fellowship for the Advancement of Global Public Health will open in early Fall 2018 to applicants from institutions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from four regions — Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. A selection committee and rigorous interview process will be part of the recruitment effort. More details regarding the application process and deadlines will be announced soon.