Global Health & Infectious Diseases - UNC Health Foundation

The UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases is committed to improving health in North Carolina and around the world through global health research, teaching, and service. We maintain five global flagship health sites in Malawi, China, Zambia, Nicaragua, and Vietnam. We also work in many other countries such as the Dominican Republic, Tanzania, Guatemala, Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand, Cambodia, Peru, Liberia, South Africa and Uganda.

We have created a framework of medical sites around the world dedicated to improving the delivery of modern healthcare. The ability to devise a reproducible model in settings around the world has made the UNC approach achievable and sustainable.

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“Johnson & Johnson is delighted to support UNC’s valuable work in Malawi. UNC has proven to be a fantastic partner, delivering a sustainable impact to those most in need.”

– Ian Walker

Why We Care

Train in-country citizens, particularly women, as healthcare providers to increase the number of local physicians and surgeons

Improve the delivery of basic healthcare – develop a stable infrastructure and access to clean water

Invest in research to prevent and treat disease, particularly malaria and AIDS

Commit to improving maternal health by reducing the rate of infant mortality and providing safer deliveries through maternity waiting homes

Focus on the “under 5’s” – early intervention and care for young children, the population most susceptible to malaria, burns, and diarrheal diseases

Address the need for women’s healthcare by providing vaccinations and screenings for cervical cancer and reducing the backlog of cancer surgeries

A Global Mindset

China

UNC faculty, students, and trainees are leading collaborative research on non-communicable diseases, HIV and STIs, maternal and child health, and other global health areas. The UNC Project is a collaboration between the UNC-Chapel Hill and Chinese partner organizations.

Malawi

UNC-Chapel Hill has been conducting HIV and STD research in Malawi since 1990 when it collaborated with the Malawi Ministry of Health to provide technical assistance in the design of several clinical management guidelines for HIV and STDs.

UNC has worked with the Malawi Ministry of Health in designing programs to control the spread of HIV and STDs, developing and testing country-specific STD guidelines, and facilitating care in STD clinics.

Nicaragua

Almost 2,000 miles away, researchers, physicians and residents from NC Children’s Hospital are improving health and outcomes for Nicaraguan families. Our collective efforts are helping improve birth outcomes, advance research in pediatric infectious diseases and train local physicians and residents in new techniques and processes.

Vietnam

The University of North Carolina Project-Vietnam (UNC-Vietnam) comprises 13 full-time Vietnamese national staff that oversee multiple NIH studies. The office is headquartered in Hanoi with two site offices in Thai Nguyen Province.

UNC-Vietnam’s overarching mission is to collaborate with local partners to improve health through research and capacity building. To date, our studies have focused on the development and evaluation of HIV-related interventions among key populations, including people who inject drugs and men who have sex with men.

Zambia

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Global Women’s Health team will lead the project to bring a new era of transformative care to Zambia’s women. The team has started 280,000 adults and children in HIV treatment across 76 clinics and hospitals, screened more than 260,000 Zambian women for cervical cancer and trained more than 10,000 healthcare providers in two decades of commitment to Zambia’s women.