The University of Birmingham and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign share several areas of common strength in health-related research that would benefit from close collaboration and could be developed along a direction focused on the Global South.

Aims & Objectives

To establish the BRIDGE Global Health Institute as a platform for developing joint research activity with partners in the Global South for the health benefit of the most deprived communities.
To stimulate four viable strands of research reflecting topics of mutual interest with co-leads from each university.
To develop joint activities through specific Global south initiatives, starting in Brazil.
To provide opportunities for students and ECRs to gain experience and training in international cooperation and working with the global south. 
To stimulate “south-to-south” development and learning.
To enhance reputation and stimulate ideas by creating a recurrent international conference series run jointly by Birmingham, Illinois, and Brazilian partners ‘The BRIDGE Conference on Research and Education in the Global South’. The ambition is to work towards a scale of ~500-1000 participants, alternating the venue and interspersing with smaller workshops.

Key Themes

The principal topics agreed following discussions between stakeholders at both institutions are:

Epidemiology/applied health with a focus on women and children’s health.
Microbiology (including microbiome) and health.
Diagnostics and community-based solutions
Wider determinants of health inequalities in society.

Project Leads

The initiative would require theme leads and an academic steering group.

Program Leads

Rachel Jordan
Jon Frampton
Zeynep Madak-Erdogan

Theme 1: Women and Children’s Health

Birmingham: John Allotey, Adam Devall
Illinois: Jodi Flaws

Microbiology and Health

Birmingham: Willem van Schaik
Illinois: Becky Smith, Rachel Bolton, Carin Vanderpool – TBC

Community-based diagnostics

Birmingham: Alex Richter, Chris Green
Illinois: Brian Cunningham

Health Inequalities

Birmingham: Rachel Jordan, Suzanne Higgs
Illinois: Andi Schwingel, Pedro Hallal, Rafael Tassitano, Cecilia Tenorio, Emerson Sebastiao, Otavio Leao, Aline Lamas

Cross cutting themes UoB; UIUC TBC

Birmingham: Krish Nirantharakumar/delegate TBC (digital health), Katie Morris (BCTU), Nick Loman & Josh Quick (genetic analysis)

Additional Collaborative Partners

Data analytics: HDS (Birmingham), National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Illinois), HPCBioMayo Clinic (Illinois)
Genetic analysis: Genomics Birmingham, Institute for Genomic Biology (Illinois), Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center (Illinois)
Clinical trials: Clinical Trials Centres (Birmingham), ITM (Birmingham), BHIC (Birmingham), Carle Medical College (Illinois)
Brazil-focused institutes: Brazil Institute (Birmingham), Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies (Illinois)

Process

Year 1

Establish partnerships.
2-3 small grant proposals developed; funder(s) identified & submitted.
Inaugural workshop completed.

Year 2

Develop partnerships further.
1 larger proposal submitted.
2^nd workshop, include planning of Year 3 conference.

Year 3

Expand network.
International conference (funded through participants and sponsors).
1-2 larger proposals.

Projected Outcomes