PI: Haun Saussy, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Partner Organization: University of Global Health Equity
The University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) was formed with the aim of recruiting talent from sub-Saharan Africa, providing world-class medical education, and sending its graduates out into the field with the material resources necessary to counter healthcare inequity. By participating in the work of UGHE, the University of Chicago will be joining this medically, morally, philosophically and politically significant movement. Having travelled to Butaro to co-teach a class in medical ethics and law with UGHE faculty in January-Febrary 2024, the UChicago faculties will continue this co-taught class in winter 2025, with an emphasis on the equity and autonomy issues that receive a somewhat different framing in the context of rural Africa. They will also invite the Butaro teaching team to visit the UChicago campus, with talks, panel discussions, and hospital rounds to be carried out with departments and centers of the University.
PI: Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, Harris School of Public Policy
Partner Organizations: Kivu Agro Pastorale, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Marakuja Kivu Research, Democratic Republic of the Congo
This project offers a vital platform for stakeholders in East Asia and North America to engage in cross-cultural dialogue on disability and care justice and provides a timely opportunity to address common challenges and share best practices in the context of recent disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions. The PI will host a 2.5-day workshop. There will be three sessions with the themes “Voices” (of different parties), “Families and Communities,” and “Policies,” respectively. Every session will have presentations and roundtable discussions that allow for interdisciplinary, cross-community, and international dialogues. Then, the participants will spend half a day visiting various social service agencies and civil society organizations in Hong Kong to gain a situated understanding of the situations facing local people with disabilities, their families, and other caregivers. The final half day will be dedicated to reflections on the field visit and discussions of the next steps.
PI: Paul Sereno, Department of Organismal Biology
Partner organization: University of Niamey, Nigeria
Sedentary cultures supported by hunting, fishing and gathering persisted at Gobero over five millennia during the predynastic African Humid Period (Green Sahara), a unique archaeological finding that has no parallel anywhere else in the world. These desert cultures were sustained by stable freshwater springs and preserved to the present by hard wetland reed deposits. This project aims to synthesize this remarkable and unique story of human adaptation within the Sahara with Nigerien colleagues assembled together at the Fossil Lab in Chicago, where the collections of humans and artifacts from six expeditions have been prepared for study. Three Nigerien colleagues who have joined in the field work in Niger over the years will visit to realize this key collaboration. The results of the proposed collaboration, which will describe the unique, long-term human settlement pattern under rare and stable ecologic circumstances at Gobero, will appear first as a summary in a high-profile journal and also as a popular story in progress in National Geographic magazine.
PI: Anne Karing, Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics
Partner Organization: REMIT Kenya
This project will study the role of small private pharmacies in addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Many low-income countries rely on the private sector to deliver essential services. When these services involve possible externalities – e.g., misuse of antibiotics increases community resistance – the private sector may be better or worse positioned to achieve public health goals. The collaborators will combine administrative data on registered and unregistered pharmacies in Kenya with several fieldwork instruments: standardized patients, provider and customer surveys, market mapping, a pharmacy diagnostic randomized controlled trial, and a customer choice experiment. The results will allow the collaborators to characterize (1) providers’ tradeoffs between profits, public health goals, and satisfying patient demand, (2) patients’ preferences over pharmacies and diagnostic information, and (3) the effectiveness of a policy that increases providers’ time spent diagnosing patients’ conditions. The insights will enrich the collaborators’ understanding of the role of private providers in essential services.
PI: Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, Harris School of Public Policy
Partner Organizations: Kivu Agro Pastorale, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Marakuja Kivu Research, Democratic Republic of the Congo
This project builds upon a unique opportunity to study, in real time, the inner operations of one of the largest armed organizations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Between January and September 2022, for each individual who joined the organization, the collaborators conducted day-long interviews. They also randomly assigned combatant-level innovations, drawing on moral psychology and practices by non-profits, with the aim of reducing civilian abuse by combatants. Drawing on this baseline, the collaborators would interview these recruits again and collect evaluations from their supervisors and peers, in order to answer the following questions: Can a 1 year-long program in perspective-taking reduce civilian abuse by rank-and-file militia combatants? The opportunity to follow-up with these combatants also allows the collaborators to answer: Who gets promoted to the top, among those who make it into the group, and what determines the quality of the pool of those selected?
PI: Thomas Rauter, Booth School of Business
Partner Organization: TBD
This project aims to examine the direct impact of corporate accounting and transparency practices on the growth and investment readiness of medium-sized high-growth firms in Uganda. The PI will collaborate with key local institutions including Imuka Access, the leading investment readiness firm in the region, DFCU Bank, and the East Africa Venture Capital Association (EAVCA) to recruit firms with at least 10 full-time employees to participate in a randomized controlled trial. For each treated firm, they plug a CFO into the firm to (i) introduce digital accounting software, (ii) teach effective cost management, and (iii) adopt financial reporting best practices. To measure investment readiness outcomes, they will organize an entrepreneur-investor matchmaking event, where local private equity investors and bank loan officers evaluate both treated and control firms (with investors unaware of treatment status) for real funding opportunities. They also collect granular survey data on firms’ financial practices and the challenges they face in accessing capital.
PI: O. Sandra Madueke-Laveaux, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Partner Organizations: Center for Advanced Treatment and Research (CATeR) for Uterine Fibroids; Ghana Health Service; FibFA Fibroid Foundation Africa LBG
This project will contribute to a sustained increase in fibroid awareness, fostering a culture of open dialogue, early detection, and proactive management within communities. The collaborators will train 40 Fibroid Champions or ambassadors in a 4-day residential training to serve as advocates and educators in their communities to raise awareness about uterine fibroids (UFs) with a potential to positively impact and improve the lives of women burdened with fibroids. Through comprehensive training, these champions will gain knowledge about fibroids, effective communication strategies, and community engagement techniques, enabling them to empower individuals to make informed decisions about their reproductive health. The participants would be selected from the 16 administrative regions across Ghana from diverse ethnic groups.
PI: Ayman Al-Hendy, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Partner Organization: Midlands State University
There is a lack of published literature on uterine fibroids in Zimbabwe despite the high burden based on observational data and hospital outpatients attendees. The Fibroid division of the Al-Hendy research team seeks to bridge this research gap by training Midlands State University National Pathology Research and Diagnostic Centre (MSUNPRDC) clinicians and technicians on how to derive human myometrial and uterine fibroid stem cell-derived organoids to understand the pathophysiology of these tumors. Over a one year period, the PI and collaborators will use a mix of synchronous and asynchronous modules to train 10 clinicians and technicians at Midlands State University in the preparation and utilization of human myometrium and uterine fibroid stem cell derived organoids. Bi-weekly training will be conducted via live sharing, videos, and seminars. A member of the team will also travel to Zimbabwe to provide additional in-person training, visit the lab, and examine the organoid models.
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