DGHI Celebrates Landmark Grant for Rwandan Partner

When Dr. Barnabas Alayande learned in fall 2025 that he had earned a Fogarty Emerging Global Leader Award from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, it marked a huge moment for the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), the 10-year-old medical school in Butaro, Rwanda, where Alayande is an assistant professor of surgery. He is the first UGHE faculty member to win the highly competitive grant, which is given to a handful of promising researchers in low- and middle-income countries to accelerate global health innovation. 

But the news also sparked celebration at the Duke Global Health Institute, where Alayande spent several weeks during fall 2024 as a visiting scholar, a time he says was pivotal in developing his research proposal.

“There is the African proverb that it takes a village,” says Alayande, who will use the grant to launch a project to expand access to breast cancer biopsies across Rwanda. “This award was not written in isolation. It was refined through structured feedback, iterative review, and exposure to how successful NIH-funded investigators frame questions of equity, impact and scalability.”

At Duke, Alayande was hosted by DGHI professor Henry Rice, M.D., a pediatric surgeon who with Alayande co-teaches a course on global surgical care that enrolls students from both Duke and UGHE. Rice and DGHI colleague Emily Smith, Ph.D., arranged opportunities for Alayande to share ideas and solicit input from scholars across disciplines, which Alayande says helped sharpen the scientific framing of his proposal. In addition to mentoring on grant writing and career development, he gained valuable insights on implementation science, which he says will be a critical part of his project to expand breast cancer diagnosis in Rwanda.

Biopsies are performed at only a few specialized hospitals in Rwanda, meaning that women often must travel long distances to confirm a breast cancer diagnosis and begin treatment. Alayande hopes to establish diagnostic capacity at four hospitals in rural districts,, enabling faster and more convenient diagnosis.

“By making tissue biopsy available at district-level hospitals, this research aims to enable earlier diagnosis, faster treatment initiation and more equitable cancer outcomes,” says Alayande, who is co-chair of UGHE’s Center for Equity in Global Surgery. “In the long term, this work will generate scalable evidence that can inform cancer system strengthening across Rwanda and in similar low- and middle-income settings globally.”

In the past five years, more than 50 researchers from 14 countries have spent time at Duke through DGHI’s visiting scholars program, which is a key part of the institute’s commitment to developing the skills of emerging research leaders in low- and middle-income countries. Rice says Alayande was an ideal candidate for the fellowship, both because of his individual talent as a researcher and DGHI’s growing partnership with UGHE, a university co-founded by Duke alumnus Paul Farmer in 2015, which is graduating its first class of medical students this month. 

“His early success  will help UGHE in advancing as a leader in scholarship in global health equity,” Rice says. 

But while Alayande may be the first UGHE faculty member to win the Fogarty award, neither he nor Rice expects he will be the last. To ensure that is the case, they have been offering free scientific and grant-writing workshops to students and junior faculty at UGHE and other African institutions, which so far have enrolled more than 2000 participants from several countries.

“This award demonstrates that African-based institutions and investigators can successfully compete for major NIH career development funding while leading contextually grounded, globally relevant research,” Alayande says. “It helps normalize the presence of investigators from low- and middle-income countries as principal drivers of research agendas, not just collaborators.”