J. Puyana1, N. Carney1, A. Sanchez3, A. Rubiano1, A. Garcia3, C. Ordoñez3, A. Peitzman1 1University Of Pittsburgh,Trauma & Acute Care Surgery,Pittsburgh, PA, USA 2Oregon Health And Science University,Informatics,Portland, OR, USA 3Universidad Del Valle,Surgery,Cali, Valle, Colombia
Introduction: International programs promoting global health-“surgery” in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) continue to sprout across many academic centers in the United States. This development has been driven in part by the enormous and ever growing interest voiced by medical students and young surgical residents to engage in “global surgery” activities. This interest has resulted from an increasing awareness of the impact of trauma and suboptimal acute care surgery as major burdens of disease around the world. We have created an innovative "cross sectional" strategy combining clinical research training, capacity building and clinical mentoring overseas in order to strengthen the academic components of such international activities. This strategy has secured continuous funding by NIH sponsored global health programs over an 8 year period. This approach has opened a new realm of opportunities by identifying long term funding mechanisms that directly impact trauma care under a number of programs not originally targeted for trauma/injury research initiatives
Methods:
After obtaining an initial D43 training grant aimed at supporting capacity building in injury research, our multidisciplinary team identified other NIH sponsored programs in the following areas: Informatics training for global health, Brain disorders in the developing world: Research across the lifespan, Global Health Research Training eCapacity and Mobile Health: Technology and Outcomes in LMICs.
Results:
Funding has been procured from four of these five programs ($US 2.5 Million). We generated research projects including the development of mobile technology based trauma information tools, web based platforms for trauma registries in underserved areas and a multicenter clinical trial in the form of pilot R21 for capacity building in traumatic brain injury. Seven students obtained a Master’s degree and one a PhD. All these students have returned to their country of origin. There has been an incremental increase in the number of contributions from LMIC trainees to several trauma/injury related academic societies. Trainee – initiated research endeavors have generated, 30 manuscripts published in peer review journals, 7 manuscripts submitted for publication, 6 publications in textbooks and 45 abstracts. This research output in trauma and acute care surgery is unprecedented in most LMICs.
Conclusion:
A multidisciplinary collaboration between health professionals from the US and LMIC has resulted in significant trauma research contributions relevant to LMICs and opened the doors for bilateral exchange and mutual benefit in both clinical and research areas. Furthermore, a new modality of global surgery is emerging supported by long term relationships with strong academic platforms that have the potential for expanding other global health ventures and providing new avenues for the development of true academic careers in global surgery.