$10M Grant Expands Tanzanian Partnership to Enhance Medical Education

John Bartlett teaching

The award will expand Duke's long-term partnership with KCMC to transform medical education for students in Tanzania.

Published October 6, 2010, last updated on June 3, 2020 under Education News

With the help of DGHI, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) has received a five year, $10 million grant from PEPFAR, Fogarty International Center and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to strengthen medical education in Tanzania. The KCMC-Duke Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) grant expands the decades-long partnership between Duke and KCMC by providing a new generation of Tanzanian physicians with the knowledge, com¬mitment and tools to become their country’s leaders in academics, research and policy.

“With the extraordinary health needs in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular Tanzania, we are wise to invest in medical training as one way of addressing the challenges,” said John Bartlett, MD, DGHI associate director for research and co-principal investigator. “We are excited by the possibilities this grant provides to the future of Tanzania and medical education, and to extend our partnership with KCMC.”

Dr. Moshi Ntabaye, Executive Director of KCMC, is also co-principal investigator on the MEPI grant.

Through the new KCMC-Duke education initiative, the medical curriculum at KCMC will be reviewed and enhanced, particularly training in basic and laboratory sciences and research methodology. The curriculum will also be revised to utilize team-based, problem-based and community-based learning methods. A series of faculty workshops will be held to train KCMC faculty in these new approaches to medical education. The initiative will also transform the information technology infrastructure at KCMC and increase access to online resources and emerging technologies including streamed videos.

The KCMC-Duke Collaboration is one of fourteen MEPI award recipients. The awards will invest a total of $130 million in a dozen countries over five years while establishing a network of about 30 regional partners, country health and education ministries, and more than 20 US collaborators.  A web-based platform will also be developed to allow all partners to share data and outcomes, providing a gateway to maximize the initiative’s global impact.

MEPI provides grants to foreign institutions in sub-Saharan African countries which receive PEPFAR support and their partners to develop or expand and enhance models of medical education. These models are intended to support PEPFAR’s goal of increasing the number of new health care workers by 140,000, strengthen medical education systems in the countries in which they exist, and build clinical and research capacity in Africa as part of a retention strategy for faculty of medical schools and clinical professors.

“We are excited by the possibilities this grant provides to the future of Tanzania and medical education, and to extend our partnership with KCMC.”

- John Bartlett

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