News Release

GlaxoSmithKline Funds $1.65 Million for Public Health Partnership

(From the Medical Center News Office) The North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation has awarded $1.65 million to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University for a collaborative partnership to address four pressing local and global health care concerns. They arequality of care and patient safety, health disparities, global health with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS and mental health care.

The collaboration pools the resources of Duke University Medical Center, Duke's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and UNC's Schools of Medicine and Public Health to design and implement educational and research initiatives that promise long-term public health improvements in each of the four areas. The collaboration will be under the direction of principal investigators Victor J. Dzau, MD, Duke's chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of the Duke University Health System, and William L. Roper, MD, MPH, UNC's vice chancellor for medical affairs, UNC Health Care's CEO and dean of the School of Medicine.

"By funding this powerful collaboration, GlaxoSmithKline enables Duke and UNC to pool our extensive strengths in research design, evidence-based medicine, public health and public policy, and community-based initiatives to design models that can be disseminated locally and globally," said Dzau. "We are very grateful for UNC's partnership, and we look forward to the far-reaching and sustainable impact of this and future collaborations between our two institutions," he said.

"This is yet another example of the enormous potential that can be realized by UNC working in concert with our colleagues in Durham," said Roper. "It recognizes that the outcome of this partnership will be better health care for all. I want to express my appreciation to the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation for making it a reality, and I look forward to the good work ahead of us," he said.

The three-year grant period begins January 1, 2006 and includes a six-month planning period followed by 30 months of implementation, evaluation and results dissemination for each of the four health care areas of concern.

Plans for addressing the issue of the quality of care and patient safety include developing an interdisciplinary training curriculum for students in the health care professions at Duke and UNC, simulated teamwork exercises and best practices aimed at eliminating care-related disparities and improving quality of care and patient safety. At the conclusion of the grant period, the curriculum will be available for national dissemination by CD-ROM or Internet.

A key component of the collaborative effort to address health disparities is is community engagement to identify needs and develop solutions. Both Duke and UNC currently have major community-based initiatives at sites in the state. Building on these initiatives with the aim of reaching underserved African-Americans and the growing Latino population, the collaborative efforts will focus on coordinating wellness activities, developing new models for chronic disease prevention and care management and training students and community health care providers.

In the initiative on global health and HIV/AIDS, the collaboration will build on well-established Duke and UNC research and education programs in Tanzania and Malawi, respectively, to develop models that can be applied to both the African AIDS pandemic and to North Carolina, where rates of infection continue to climb among underserved populations. The project seeks to design culturally appropriate research projects to understand and address cultural, economic, and other barriers to effective HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and to involve Duke and UNC faculty, fellows, and residents in community-level education, care, and research.

The initiative inmental health and community-based training focuses on a critical need for training and reform as North Carolina transitions from a state-funded and administered mental health care system to one that is privatized. Duke and UNC will collaborate in addressing this issue with the North Carolina Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disability, and Substance Abuse Services. The universities will each provide a senior psychiatry resident and faculty member to lead development of extensive training curricula for new and existing community mental health providers. Using emerging evidence-based practices, the participants' goal is to equip a workforce of mental health care professionals to care for seriously ill patients in non-hospital community settings.

"We applaud the leadership and vision of these two major health institutions," said Chris Viehbacher, president, US Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline. "We are pleased to support this kind of initiative and believe it can result in valuable new ideas to improve health locally and globally."

Current and recent examples of Duke-UNC collaborations include the Robertson Scholars Program; the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) consortium; the Southeast Regional Center of Excellence for Emerging Infections and Biodefense (SERCEB); the North Carolina Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Program; as well as a health care provider training program to improve breast and cervical cancer screening rates; a program serving abused and neglected children; and a curriculum program on physician fatigue and impairment.

For more information, contact Jeff Molter, (919) 684-4148 molte001@mc.duke.edu

February 2 , 2006