Health Initiatives

Children are a key constituent of any society.  In the event of national scale-emergencies, hospitals, and medical institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have a standard protocol, capacity to mitigate as well as the resources to ensure children receive the stipulated and adequate care.

On August 17^th and 18^th, Columbia Global Centers Nairobi hosted a PGIF Workshop by Drs' Phillip Larussa, Wilmot James and Lawrence Stanberry - which involved a Pediatric Leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa.  Participants were from Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Lesotho, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana, and Liberia.

The goal of this meeting was to assemble key African pediatric leaders in the academic, government and not-for-profit sectors to discuss Global Health Security Agenda issues as they relate to the child and adolescent.

On July 11, 2018, Columbia Global Centers hosted a Kenya/Brazil oral health learning laboratory workshop on opportunities for addressing Challenges in Oral Health and dental care.  The workshop brought together stakeholders from government, private and public institutions.  Each stakeholder brought a wealth of experience and provided opportunities for knowledge-sharing. 

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.

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. 

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.

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:

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”.

“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?”

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.

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.

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.