Our Center is at the forefront of initiating and supporting health projects. We work in the areas of food and nutrition, maternal health, child mortality, dental health, water and sanitation, communicable and non-communicable diseases, food production and community health worker training. We participates in, and have established, several health programs through a collaboration between Columbia University’s Medical College, the Earth Institute, the Institute of Human Nutrition and local academic institutions, government bodies, non-governmental Institutions and the private sector.
Health Initiatives
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Healthy Cities! Nairobi Non Motorized Transport Policy: Popular Version Launch
This first session in partnership with the Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations and the Center for Sustainable Development at the Earth Institute in a two-part series that takes a hard look at Kenya’s Urban Transportation Infrastructure in an age of climate change. This session discussed the state of NMT infrastructure in Kenya.
Improving Capacity to Address Gender- Based Violence in Kenya: A Cross- Sectoral Conversation About Achieving Justice.
From this event, we will hear from a public health student, GBV researcher and expert, and legal expert about public health and legal approaches to GBV interventions in Kenya.
Why Africa needs to be involved in the development of Covid-19 vaccines
Understanding the epidemiology of Covid-19 and moving forward would be critical to determining policy on the need to adopt interventions, including the Covid-19 vaccines that are being developed.
Covid-19: Guarding against the misuse of highly pathogenic agents. By Talkmore Maruta
There is a need to consolidate global efforts to control and manage highly pathogenic agents like SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19). The legal framework under development by Africa-CDC will address this by assigning government agencies to regulate research activities that include high-consequence pathogens, and to ensure ethical boundaries are not breached.
Beyond lockdown: Africa needs to ramp up its testing, tracing and treatment efforts
Lockdowns and physical distancing have proved crucial to slowing the spread of Covid-19 in the short term, but looking to the future these measures are unsustainable and have caused a lot of social and economic damage. As the race for the vaccine continues experts are now focused on improving testing, tracing and treatment efforts, especially in Africa, where life-threatening gaps exist.
A global investment in public health is vital for the survival of future generations.
Every evening during the early days of the pandemic, people opened their windows at a set hour to applaud the heroic women and men who were putting their health on the line in the fight against Covid-19. In New York, London, Madrid and other cities, it became something of a ritual. For me, it was a daily reminder of those invisible workers, the public health professionals who battle the pandemic behind the scenes. It was also a reminder of how now, more than ever, we must invest in public health.
Striking a balance: Public health and social measures in Africa
Finding the balance between limiting disease transmission, maintaining access to critical services and supporting livelihoods is the public health challenge of this century.
Africa needs to do more to position itself to benefit from future Covid-19 vaccines.
Never before has the public had an opportunity to see, in glaring detail, the difference good governance makes. As Covid-19 spreads across the globe, we witness how different leaders address the same crisis. Some have the skills, qualities and appetite required to best guide their countries through the crisis, while others demonstrate their incompetence on a near-daily basis.
Part 1: Oral Health and Healthcare during COVID-19: Lessons from India, Kenya and the United States
This was the first panel of a two-part panel series hosted by the Columbia Global Centers| Nairobi and Columbia Global Centers| Mumbai. The purpose of this series was to discuss lessons learned from India, Kenya and the United States in finding innovative ways to provide in-person and virtual clinical and outreach services in dental healthcare delivery during this pandemic.
COVID-19 and mental health in informal settlements: How bad is it and what can be done?
The purpose of this panel discussion was to bring together mental health experts living and working in informal settlements to discuss mental health in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide recommendations for managing and mitigating mental health challenges in these communities.
Voices from the Ebola nurses and the implications in the battle against COVID-19.
From this webinar on ‘Frontline Nurses: Leaders in Pandemic Response’ you will get to hear the voices of the Ebola nurses, understand their insights, and consider the implications for all of us today in the battle against COVID-19.
Learn on how Africa is better managing the spread of Covid- 19
This special webinar on 'Africa Confronting Covid- 19' held on April 22nd 2020 at 3:00 pm GMT was co- hosted by ICAP at Columbia University and Columbia Global Centers| Nairobi together with Columbia Global Centers| Tunis
International Initiative for Pediatrics and Nutrition (IIPAN) Regional Training
The Workshop was an opportunity for the team of forty nutritionists to gain and share policy and health projects in the line of nutritional care for children with cancer in the African region.
The Mapping of Sub Saharan Africa Pediatric Hospitals, and the Assessment on their Capacity to Respond to Public Health Threats
Children are a key constituent of any society. In the event of national-scale emergencies, epidemics, and disasters, hospitals and medical institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have a standard protocol, the capacity to mitigate such circumstances immediately, nor the resources to ensure children receive the stipulated and adequate care.
Sharing Science and Policy to Address Air Pollution: The Nairobi Air Pollution Roundtable
The session was an opportunity for key Africa’s researchers, academia, and development partners to share existing science, policy, and health projects in the region, identify linkages, and explore future collaborations to combat air pollution in the region
The African Nutritional Sciences Research Consortium Meeting
Pediatric Leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa Meeting
The meeting assembled key African pediatric leaders in the academic, government and NGOs to discuss Global Health Security Agenda issues.
Opportunities for Addressing Challenges in Oral Health and Dental Care
The center hosted a workshop on opportunities for addressing challenges in oral health and dental care.
New PHD Scholarship on Food Security and Nutrition
The rare opportunity – the first in Africa – is a major collaboration with Columbia University. The ANSRC is a partnership that brings together academic and research institutions across the East African region with the goal of building a PhD training programme in basic research in nutritional and agriculture science. The main aim is to address food insecurity in the region and raise the number of trained manpower in the selected fields of study across East African universities.
Calls to boost universities’ PhD science Training Capacity
Strengthening the capacity of East African universities to train PhD and post-doctoral academics in areas such as human nutritional sciences, agriculture, technology, engineering and mathematics is urgently needed to develop local scientific capacity and help the region to achieve its development goals.
Africa Nutritional Sciences Research Consortium (ANSRC)
The consortium is being facilitated by Professors Richard Deckelbaum and Debra Wolgemuth of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, Dr. James Ntambi, professor of Biochemistry and Nutrition at the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, adjunct professor at the University of Nairobi. The Institute has established a coordinating office for this program at Columbia University’s Columbia Global Centers | Africa (Nairobi), under the direction of the East Africa Coordinator and Kenyan native, Dr. Murugi Ndirangu.
Little Research is Done in Africa by or for Nurses
Moving the Agenda Forward for Nursing and Midwifery Clinical Research in Southern and Eastern African Countries
Columbia Global Centers | Nairobi, hosted “Moving the Agenda Forward for Nursing and Midwifery Clinical Research in Southern and Eastern Africa”, on July 8th – 9th, 2015 in Nairobi Kenya. Partners included:
East Africa Oral Health Summit
Columbia Global Centers | Nairobi hosted the first ever regional Oral Health Summit that was held from 23 to 24 March 2016. The summit was hosted under a collaborative partnership between the Columbia University Medical Center, University of Nairobi, School of Dental Science and Unilever Africa, to address the topic; “Integration of Oral Health and Health”.
Nobel Peace Prize nominee raises her voice for Somalia in second Columbia Global Centers | Africa lecture
“There is a generation of Somalis that is lost, due to the war. They have never seen a peaceful Somalia. This is dangerous for the entire world, when you consider that there are 9 million people that know only war and violence – how can you work together as a country to stop the fighting?”
President’s Global Innovation Fund Helps Launch Teledentistry Project in Kenya
Teledentistry – short for telemedicine in dentistry – uses digital and telecommunication technology to support long-distance health care, patient and professional health education, public health and health administration. This emerging technology includes wand-like cameras lighter than electric toothbrush, along with videoconferencing and streaming media.
African Migration and Development Policy Center team visits CGC Africa
CGC | Africa was proud to host the team of the African Migration and Development Policy Centre (AMADPOC) in Nairobi, Kenya, headed by Professor John O. Oucho, PhD, on Monday 27 January 2014, as part of the E-Conference on the Health Consequences of Migration, hosted online across the Columbia Global Centers and the Columbia Population Research Center in New York.
CGC Africa Holds Africa Nutritional Sciences Research Consortium Workshop on PhD Graduate Training
The African Nutritional Sciences Research Consortium (ANSRC) held a two-day workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, on the 24th to 25th January 2013. In total, 43 participants attended the ANSRC workshop, with regional representation drawn from Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, and also from Tunisia (ADB representatives), USA and Italy.