kmitch@duke.edu – Impact Report: 2024-2025

08Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

A Tool That Knows When and Where Malaria Will Strike

We choose ... to fight malaria with AI and data William Pan, Dr.P.H., a DGHI professor and environmental scientist, has figured out how to harness data to see into the future. For more than a decade, he’s been developing tools that use large data sets to assess and predict disease trends, including a system that has been deployed to forecast malaria outbreaks in the Amazon. Now, he’s made that system bigger and better — and it’s about to get its most important test.In fall 2025, Panama and Honduras will become the first two countries to integrate the forecasting system into their national malaria control efforts. The countries’ health ministries will use the forecasts, which are based on AI-powered analysis of real-time climate, health and environmental data, to guide decisions about…

07Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

A Childcare Center Opens Doors to Women’s Health

Featured Story, Kenya

We choose ... to help young mothers focus on their health In global health, the most impactful solutions usually start with listening. Duke students Sydney Chen, Melat Woldetensae and Isabel Siebrecht carried that lesson with them when they first traveled to Kisumu, Kenya, in summer 2023, where they were part of a field research project aimed at improving screening for cervical cancer. They listened as young mothers described how they often missed medical appointments because there was no one to take care of their children. They listened, and then they acted.Chen and Woldetensae spent the next year making plans to launch a childcare center in one of Kisumu’s county hospitals. Staffed by community health promoters, the Jali Watoto Childcare Centre opened in May 2024, giving mothers a free place to…

06Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

Understanding the Risks of Heat Exposure to Kidney Health

Featured Story, Sri Lanka

We choose ... to find answers to a rising tide of kidney disease In Sri Lanka and other hot climates around the world, an alarming spike in kidney disease among young men has raised concerns about the health impacts of a warming planet. It’s a mystery captured in the very name of the ailment — chronic kidney disease of unknown origin, or CKDu — but the risks appear most acute for people working outdoors in hot, dry conditions.At DGHI, environmental scientist Nishad Jayasundara, Ph.D., and nephrologist Anna Strasma, M.D., are leading an interdisciplinary effort to unravel the disease’s cause and find ways to protect workers. “This work is at the forefront of understanding how environmental conditions — particularly heat stress — impact the health of the outdoor labor force,” says…

05Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

Students Make a Difference in Pamlico County

Featured Story, North Carolina (USA)

We choose ... to improve health access in rural communities When Diana Silimperi, M.D., settled in North Carolina’s Pamlico County in 2018, she saw some of the same challenges she’d observed over her career in global health. The rural county, which is home to around 12,000 residents in eastern North Carolina, has no hospital or specialized services, and many residents struggle to access care. Silimperi, a pediatrician and a DGHI adjunct professor, saw an opportunity to bring new resources and energy to the county. With DGHI colleague Sumi Ariely, Ph.D., she launched a summer research program that pairs Duke undergraduate students with county health leaders to help them explore ways to improve services and expand access for remote and vulnerable populations. Now in its fourth year, the program has produced…

04Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

The Partnership Behind Rwanda’s Successful Marburg Response

Featured Story, Rwanda

We choose ... to build more effective responses to pandemic threats Launched in 2022, the Covid Treatment QuickStart Consortium grew out of an urgent need to aid countries still feeling the grip of Covid-19 by scaling up access to testing and treatment. But even then, the brain trust behind the effort — which is spearheaded by Duke researchers and includes a host of public- and private-sector partners — had a bigger vision.“We saw an opportunity to partner with countries and strengthen their response to an ongoing health crisis,” says Krishna Udayakumar, M.D., a DGHI professor and director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, an implementing partner of QuickStart. “But at the same time, doing so lays the groundwork for building more resilient health systems that can better handle future…

03Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

Building a Medical Device that Works for Uganda

Featured Story, Uganda

We choose ... to design surgical tools for low-resource settings A pediatric surgeon with a knack for innovation, Tamara Fitzgerald, M.D., Ph.D., works to create surgical tools that are designed to be built and used in low-resource settings. For the past seven years, her team, including students from Duke and Uganda’s Makerere University, has refined the KeyScope, a flexible laparoscope that could make pediatric abdominal surgeries easier in places like Uganda. This year, the project’s manufacturing partner, ShiShi International, became the first Ugandan company to be registered with the Health Industry Business Communications Council, bringing the KeyScope a critical step closer to clinical use. But Fitzgerald’s aims go beyond just one device. “It is about increasing capacity in Uganda for medical device development,” she says. I don’t try to change…

02Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

A Head Start for Tanzania’s Home-Grown Health Researchers

Featured Story, Tanzania

We choose ... to train the next generation of innovators in trauma care The graduation in November 2024 of four students from a fledgling Tanzanian master’s degree program may not have made big headlines. But it marked a significant milestone in DGHI’s long-standing partnerships in the East African country — one that may become a model for sustaining equitable global collaborations in the years ahead.The graduates — medical doctors Alice Andongolile, Rosalia Njau, William Nkenguye and Edwin Shewiyo — were the first to complete the Trauma Research Capacity Building in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (TRECK) program, which teaches research skills to Tanzanian students interested in injury prevention and trauma care. The brainchild of DGHI associate professor and GEMINI Center director Catherine Staton, M.D., and Blandina Mmbaga, M.D., a pediatrician and director of research at the…

01Aug 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu

A Champion for Better Talaromycosis Care

Featured Story, Vietnam

We choose ... to improve treatment of a neglected deadly disease For the past 15 years, Thuy Le, M.D., Ph.D., has spearheaded a relentless campaign to bring attention and resources to fighting talaromycosis, a rare fungal disease that occurs most commonly in patients with advanced AIDS. Caused by an opportunistic infection of a fungus endemic to tropical regions in Southeast Asia, the disease kills one in four patients with the infection, making timely diagnosis and treatment critical to saving the lives of its victims.Le, an infectious disease specialist who first encountered talaromycosis while working in HIV wards in Vietnam, led the first clinical trial of talaromycosis patients, establishing treatment guidelines that have helped cut mortality from the disease in half. This year, her team published results of research into improved…

31Jul 2025 by kmitch@duke.edu