In the spring of 2023, Amira Adam received exciting news: she had been accepted into the PhD program at the UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences (IGHS). However, her world suddenly turned upside-down. War broke out in her home city of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in an attempted coup. When a building two streets away from her house was bombed, Adam knew she had to flee.
“There was no electricity, no water, no food, and bombing all day,” Adam said.
Adam and her mother traveled to Egypt, where family members took them in. She was able to continue working remotely with the World Health Organization on a project for HIV, hepatitis and blood safety programs in Sudan. Eventually, UCSF faculty and staff helped Adam secure a U.S. visa, allowing her to travel to San Francisco — a process that took several months of extra background checks. Finally, almost six months later, she arrived at UCSF to begin her studies.
Adam is one of several scholars helped by UCSF’s Global Scholars Program which promotes academic freedom by assisting scholars at risk to move to UCSF to continue their research or studies. Scholars can apply for UCSF degree programs or postdoctoral research positions.
From Afghanistan to UCSF
The program was launched at UCSF in 2017 through the support of former Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost Dan Lowenstein, MD, under the leadership of Jess Ghannam, PhD, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and IGHS faculty. At the time, Ghannam said that hearing from scholars struggling with unrest in Afghanistan prompted him and Lowenstein to create a UCSF chapter of the global Scholars at Risk network. However, the UCSF program was small and could only help one or two scholars a year.
Then, in 2021, a large donation from an anonymous funder allowed UCSF to expand the program just as the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. At the time, IGHS was conducting its virtual ITAPS scientific writing program for public health professionals from low- and middle-income countries, including trainees from Afghanistan. One young trainee received a letter threatening her life, said Ritu Sehgal, MA, deputy director of the ITAPS program. “She was really scared, and we had to help her get out of Kabul.”
Sehgal worked closely with Ali Mirzazadeh, PhD, MD, MPH, an instructor in the program and associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at IGHS, to help the woman move to San Francisco. It took a few months to facilitate her student visa, travel and lodging arrangements. It was a transformational move — since relocating to UCSF, the woman has completed her master’s degree in global health and is now enrolled in a PhD program at IGHS.
According to Sehgal, 22 scholars have been supported by the Global Scholars program since 2021. They are from Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Tajikistan and Ukraine. They are now part of the UCSF community as master’s students, doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and researchers. In the last year, the program has helped 3 Afghan scholars move to UCSF with their families and helped them settle in. The program has also supported 34 scholars from Afghanistan, Iran and Ukraine to attend short-term online training programs at UCSF.
Global Scholars Program Joins IGHS
This September, the program officially joined IGHS. The program’s move from the Executive Vice Chancellor’s office to IGHS makes sense from a logistical and practical standpoint, according to Ghannam. “IGHS is uniquely qualified to understand the special needs of global scholars,” he said, “to be culturally aware of what those scholars need and support them to thrive.”
Currently, the program is run entirely by volunteers, with Sehgal, Mirzazadeh, and others regularly devoting several hours to the program each week. A close partnership with the UCSF International Students and Scholars Office supports immigration issues. The program helps with all aspects of a scholar’s resettlement to the U.S., including procuring visas, flights, medical insurance, apartments and tuition assistance.
“When they leave their home countries, they can only carry one bag and have to leave everything else behind,” Sehgal said. “We do our best to make them feel welcome and help them navigate the complexities of adjusting to a new culture and environment and setting up a home in the Bay Area.”
Sehgal and Mirzazadeh help scholars create a sense of community with each other through a WhatsApp group and shared activities, including a monthly lunch meeting and progress check-ins. “The program has been very supportive,” Adam said, “they’re trying to make it as convenient as possible for us just to learn.”
Global Scholars Bring Needed Perspectives to Research
It’s not just the scholars that benefit from the program, however. Sehgal and Mirzazadeh stress that the UCSF community also benefits from welcoming these scholars and learning from their expertise. Many global scholars are from regions that are high priority from a global health standpoint due to the burden of preventable infectious and chronic diseases. Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, are the only countries where wild poliovirus remains endemic. Global scholars offer unique insights into conducting research in these regions, facilitate cross-partnership collaborations, and speak local languages fluently.
“Before this, we didn’t have a lot of researchers from these countries studying global health at UCSF,” Mirzazadeh said. “Understanding local culture and using local researchers can help us improve outcomes, which would not be possible otherwise.” In addition, he said, local researchers are more likely to gain the trust of research participants since they have cultural understanding and shared languages, leading to better community engagement and data collection.
Plus, he said, the global scholars are resilient. They’ve faced adversity and still find ways to overcome new challenges. “I think this benefits anyone who hires them or includes them in their research projects,” he said.
For her part, Adam’s experience with conflict in Sudan has impacted what she wants to study. She is now researching ways to prevent health services disruption in areas affected by extreme conflict or environmental emergencies.
Urgent Need of Funding for the Global Scholars Program
Ghannam, Sehgal and Mirzazadeh would like to help more scholars at risk, but a critical lack of funding means they can only rely on word-of-mouth referrals. “We want to support more scholars, but the funding and administrative support required is much more than we currently have,” Sehgal said. “We try to do our best, but right now, we’re overextended.”
Though the program is partially funded through grants and private donors, the current funding isn’t enough. “The unfortunate reality is that more scholars are at risk now because the world is in deep conflict globally,” said Ghannam. “The need for this program is greater now than ever.”
Leaders of the Global Scholars program said that they hope more UCSF faculty members in global health or adjacent fields will consider offering jobs or funding sources to global scholars. While the program supports master’s students for one year and PhD and postdoctoral students for two years, after that time the scholars must find their own sources of funding. Eventually, when it is safe, the students will return to their home countries and continue their global health work with enhanced education and experience. However, conflict can stretch on for several years in some regions of the world.
The program has also proposed creating an endowment fund to provide scholars and their families with tuition, legal, administrative, and other support while preparing for future emergencies. “This program has been successful in many ways,” Sehgal said. “I hope we can continue aiding scholars from conflict zones who want to continue their academic careers.”
Your Help is Needed
The program calls on the UCSF community to help global scholars with job placements. If you have open research positions related to global health, please contact Ritu Sehgal at sar@ucsf.edu.
Additionally, if you are interested in donating funds to support bringing global scholars from conflict zones to UCSF, please visit the program’s online donation page to learn how you can help.
The Global Scholars Program would like to thank the members of its working committee, without whom the program would not be possible, and the generous donors who have contributed so far.