University of Ghana was founded in 1948 as the University College of the Gold Coast and is the oldest and largest of six public Universities in Ghana. The current student population is 29,754, with 1,816 post-Graduate students, 26,154 Bachelors’ degree students and 1,784 sub-degree students. There are 865 faculty members engaged in research and teaching. The College of Health Sciences as well as Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Allied Health Sciences are located at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), the only tertiary care center in southern Ghana. Read more…

KNUST was established in 1952. The College of Health Sciences includes the Faculties of Allied Health Sciences, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Medical Sciences, Dental School, School of Veterinary Medicine and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in tropical medicine (KCCR). The School of Medical Sciences was founded in 1975 with an original mandate to train physicians, medical scientists and medical laboratory technologists. Currently, the School has 14 Departments teaching courses and concentrates on training Physicians at the undergraduate level, and medical scientists at the postgraduate levels. The Medical Laboratory Technology program is run separately in the Faculty of Allied Health Sciences. Read more…

KATH is located in Kumasi, Ghana, and is the teaching hospital that has been associated with KNUST since 1975. As one of the largest referral centers outside Accra, KATH receives referrals from throughout Ghana. At more than 1000 beds, KATH’s leading causes of admissions include malaria, neonatal sepsis, eclampsia / preeclampsia, low birthweight, and asphyxia. Leading causes of death at KATH include cardiovascular events, low birthweight, birth asphyxia, and HIV/AIDS. KATH has played an important role in UM’s partnership with Ghana, hosting the recent Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) grant jointly held by KNUST and UM under the directorship of Dr. Peter Donkor. The MEPI project, designed to build research capacity among emergency medicine trainees, built on the infrastructure created by the UM-Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative.

University of Michigan Ghana Emergency Medicine Collaborative: In 2001, following the collapse of the Accra Sports Stadium that killed 127 Ghanaians, the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons identified Emergency Medicine as a specialty in urgent need of development. A national commission on the state of Emergency Medicine in Ghana was established composed of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, National Ambulance Service, Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service, and other national stakeholders. The public response to the stadium disaster prompted the Ghanaian government to construct a new national Accident and Emergency Center in Kumasi. The Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons approached the University of Michigan Department of Emergency Medicine in 2007 to collaborate on the development of a postgraduate training program in Emergency Medicine. Building on previously successful collaborations with the University of Michigan Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the School of Public Health, a partnership was created with the Ghanaian federal agencies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), and the University of Michigan Department of Emergency Medicine. The primary goal of the partnership was to improve the provision and outcomes of emergency care in Ghana by developing an Emergency Medicine training program. Previous Fogarty trainee, Dr. Rockefeller Oteng, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, has been instrumental in building the collaboration. He is a Ghanian-born Emergency Medicine physician who lives in Kumasi half of the year and served as the first Emergency Medicine Department Head at KNUST.

Strengthening Injury Control in West Africa: KNUST is also home to a Fogarty D43 collaboration with the University of Washington to strengthen the capacity for injury control research in Ghana, build a cadre of qualified researchers and generate research that will be translated into effective activities and implementable policy across the spectrum of injury control. This program builds upon a 20-year collaboration for injury research between KNUST and UW, and has significantly influenced policy in Ghana. Dr. Charles Mock, UW Professor of Surgery and Epidemiology, worked in Ghana for four years as a staff surgeon in a rural hospital in Berekum and as a Senior Lecturer in Surgery at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. While on sabbatical leave from 2007 – 2010, he was responsible for developing WHO’s activities on trauma care at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability. He continues to serve as Chair of the Working Group for Essential Trauma Care of the International Society of Surgery, a collaboration of the Society and WHO which seeks to improve the care of injured patients. The collaborative research in Ghana incorporates community-based surveys that include direct household visits and interviews. This research has been instrumental in developing and implementing low-tech and sustainable programs to establish or improve pre-hospital trauma care in Ghana. Read more…

GHS is the Research and Development Division (RDD) of the Ghana Health Service (Director: Abraham Hodgson, MBChB, PhD) was originally established to address the needs of the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS). The RDD’s aim is to strengthen, harmonize, coordinate and support research for health sector policy and program development and implementation. RDD is guided by a clear vision and principles to help provide empirical findings for policy formulation to improve the health service delivery system in the country. The Division has three research centers in Navrongo, Kintampo and Dodowa, each operating a longitudinal, population-based demographic surveillance system and each conducting high-quality, internationally collaborative research. UM faculty have long standing relationships with the RDD and are well-positioned to initiate multi-site research projects across the three research centers. Read more…

The Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC) (Director: Abraham Oduro, MBChB, PhD) in particular has been a strong partner for the University of Michigan faculty, co-authoring dozens of shared publications in its 25-year tenure. Both RDD and NHRC function as a multidisciplinary team with expertise in medicine, public health, laboratory medicine, social sciences, and related fields. NHRC senior medical officer Dr. John Williams (MBChB, MS) is working with UM assistant professor Dr. Cheryl Moyer (PhD, MPH) on a three-year USAID-funded project that involves prospectively identifying all maternal and neonatal mortality and near-miss events across four rural districts in northern Ghana, and then mapping the events against facility locations and risk factors. This builds on a previous collaborative project between NHRC and UM (SANDS: The Stillbirth And Neonatal Death Study) that yielded 11 peer-reviewed publications and inclusion in Ghana’s national newborn strategy planning meetings. Read more…

KBTH is the teaching hospital that has been affiliated with the University of Ghana since 1962. As the third largest hospital in Africa and the leading national referral center in Ghana, KBTH has more than 2000 beds and sees approximately 1500 patients per day across a range of clinical departments, including neuro-surgery, dentistry, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, renal, orthopedics, oncology, dermatology, cardiothoracic, radiotherapy, radio diagnosis, pediatric surgery and reconstructive plastic surgery and burns. KBTH has been home to ongoing exchanges between the University of Michigan and Ghana for more than 20 years.

Postdoctoral And Research Training NEtwoRk – Investing in Innovation (PARTNER-II): This UM Fogarty-funded program provides interdisciplinary training to Ghanaian post-doctoral trainees to address global health challenges. This renewal grant and its predecessor (PI: Tom Robins, MD, MPH) have funded 20 Ghanaian post-doctoral fellows to either 1) spend 4 months to one year at UM participating in intensive interdisciplinary research training; or 2) spend 6 months in Ann Arbor participating in intensive training and mentorship, followed by 6 months in Ghana implementing the project planned while in Ann Arbor. The PARTNER-II grant pairs Ghanaian trainees with Michigan- and Ghana-based mentors to assist reintegration into Ghanaian research institutions. Read more…