The Institute for Global Health Sciences (IGHS) is pleased to welcome the Health and Human Rights Initiative and the Center for Tuberculosis to the IGHS community. Both groups have officially joined IGHS, and this integration marks a significant step toward the institute’s commitment to addressing global health challenges through multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation.
“Welcoming the Health and Human Rights Initiative and the Center for Tuberculosis into IGHS is an exciting step forward,” said Payam Nahid, MD, MPH, IGHS executive director. “These groups bring critical expertise in human rights and infectious diseases, enhancing the collective capacity at the Institute. Their presence creates new opportunities for the types of cross-disciplinary collaboration that will help reduce health disparities and improve health outcomes worldwide.”
The Health and Human Rights Initiative (HHRI) is dedicated to advancing the understanding and practice of health as a fundamental human right. By focusing on research, advocacy and education, HHRI works to ensure that health-related human rights are recognized and implemented globally, particularly for immigrant, asylee and refugee families. Current projects include the Human Rights Collaborative, a Bay Area-based clinic for forensic medical evaluations; providing clinical training to the front-line health workers and clinicians delivering humanitarian healthcare at the US-Mexico border; and an online asylum medicine training course by the Asylum Medicine Training Initiative (AMTI). AMTI will also offer a Global Health and Human Rights webinar series this fall. HHRI is led by Triveni DeFries, MD, MPH, assistant professor at the UCSF School of Medicine. HHRI joins as a program of the IGHS Center for Global Health Delivery, Diplomacy and Economics.
The Center for Tuberculosis is at the forefront of combating tuberculosis (TB), one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases. Through cutting-edge research, training and improving TB practice and policies, the center brings investigators together spanning TB bench to clinical sciences, global health delivery, economics and diplomacy, to develop innovative diagnostics, treatments and vaccines to improve TB prevention and control worldwide. Studies in drug-resistant TB, childhood TB, TB epidemiology, implementation sciences and more are conducted in countries around the globe, including Uganda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Nahid leads the Center for Tuberculosis alongside co-directors Elizabeth Fair, PhD, MPH, professor at the UCSF School of Medicine; Rada Savic, PhD, MS, professor at the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences; and Babak Javid, PhD, MB, associate professor at the UCSF School of Medicine. Nahid also serves as the co-director of the UC Tuberculosis Research Advancement Center (UC TRAC) with Jeff Cox, PhD, professor at the UC Berkeley Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. UC TRAC is a partnership between UCSF and UC Berkeley that supports the development of the next generation of tuberculosis researchers.