UA News

A newly-awarded grant from the National Institutes of Health totaling nearly $1 million will enable the UA's Biomedical Research Abroad: Vistas Open Program to continue.

An international research program for University of Arizona undergraduate and graduate students will continue with a newly funded grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The federal agency has awarded $995,668 to the UA. The funds will support the Biomedical Research Abroad: Vistas Open Program, or BRAVO!/MHIRT, which sends UA student researchers abroad each year to conduct original research.

MHIRT is the agency's Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training Program, which is administered by NIH's National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities.

The grant "ensures that the BRAVO!/MHIRT program will be able to send student researchers abroad for the next five years," said Carol Bender, the Undergraduate Biology Research Program director and co-principal investigator on the new grant.

"International experience is vitally important and this program provides a means for students to obtain it," Bender added. The grant will also enable the program to focus more keenly on issues related to health disparities.

BRAVO! is an individualized program that was created in 1992 under the UA's Undergraduate Biology Research Program, or UBRP, and has since supported more than 170 UA students in their research projects in more than 30 countries, including Australia, Belgium, China, Canada, Egypt, India and South Africa.

"Since 2002 we have intensified our efforts to involve students in basic, clinical or translational research that reduces health disparities," Bender noted.

Among other topics, students have studied mother-to-child transmission of AIDS in India, child obesity in Saipan, developing techniques to detect parasites that affect children in Egypt and studying gene expression in cancer to improve therapy.

Both BRAVO! and UBRP encourage students to pursue studies and advanced degrees in biomedical and biological sciences and have each has received grant funding from the NIH and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in addition to various other funding agencies.

Charles Sterling, a UA veterinary science and microbiology professor, is the principal investigator on the grant and the program's co-director alongside Bender. Collaborating institutions include Bergen University in Norway, Cambridge University in England, The University of Florence in Italy, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru and the University of South Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

In their proposal to the NIH, Sterling and Bender noted that the purpose of the program was to inform students about ways to "think globally and act locally" while focusing on health issues.

Under the new grant funding, the program is intended to improve participation in biomedical and behavioral research among underrepresented students of color and those who are members of medically underserved populations.

The federal government designates medically underserved areas and populations as those that have a low ratio of physicians for the population, a high infant mortality rate and a notable percentage of individuals living below the federal poverty level, among other criteria.

The UA proposal noted that the program's focus coincides with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' "Healthy People 2010," a report that details how the nation must work to improve the health status for all people.

The University's program will also work to improve collaborations between the UA and international institutions, further engage students in research, boost faculty interaction and also figure out ways to engage both students and faculty in addressing problems associated with health disparities among different populations.

The funding will support eight undergraduate students and two graduate students or health professionals each year during the funding period. All the while, BRAVO!/MHIRT will support those students in mentorship environments and also encourage them to present and publish their work.

"As residents of a border state, Arizonans are acutely aware that these problems do not respect national boundaries and that it is incumbent upon all of us to think and act as citizens of the world," Bender and Sterling's proposal noted.

"It is in the best interests of our nation and the international community that we educate young people to address problems in a way that is inclusive and leads to a better standard of living for all," the document continued.

"The activities described in this proposal are designed to do that by involving undergraduate, graduate and health professions students who are from health disparities populations in mentored research both domestically and internationally."