Research!America

“Looking through a global health lens, we are able to uncover disease in the U.S.,” said Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, of the Sabin Institute, at the May 7 Capitol Hill briefing, Lessons Learned Through Global Health R&D—What’s in it for the U.S. and Our Health Care System.

Karen A. Goraleski; Cyril Enwonwu, ScD, PhD, MDS; Jim Kazura, MD; Sten Vermund, MD, PhD; Antonina King, Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health; Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD; Kadrieh Abou Shehadeh, Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health

The briefing, hosted in partnership with Research!America member, The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and sponsored by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Chairman Donald Payne (D-NJ) and Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) showcased the bipartisan nature of research for health and illustrated how the U.S. investment in global health research offers the opportunity to think about U.S. health care in new ways.

Additional presenters Cyril Enwonwu, ScD, PhD, MDS, University of Maryland School of Dentistry; Jim Kazura, MD, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine; and Sten Vermund, MD, PhD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, cited specific examples from their global health research that demonstrated how the U.S. is incorporating lessons for the benefit of Americans’ health as well as those outside the U.S.

Hotez drew on lessons learned from neglected tropical disease research (also known as diseases of poverty) and asthma in developing countries that has shed light on the existence and contribution of these diseases to developmental delays, poverty and illness in concentrated pockets throughout the U.S. In addition to the hidden burden of disease, this global health research has also allowed us to study transmission of these diseases within and among our own communities.

Enwonwu discussed the importance of our investment from the point of his research in malnutrition, which includes obesity, a serious problem afflicting urban areas around the world as lifestyles become more sedentary and diets shift. As with the underfed, the immunity of those overfed are also compromised, leading to nutrition-related chronic diseases, diabetes, oral complications and the two-way traffic of poverty and ill health, affecting development of humans even while they are still in the mother’s womb.

Kazura offered the value of our investment in global health research across many sectors, both in the crippling effects malaria has on our military and business and vacation travelers abroad, as well as the economic impact of potential biological warfare in viruses like Rift Valley Fever, which can easily penetrate into our food chain and has the potential to shut down the livestock industry as well as domestic and foreign trade. He also shared important research findings from abroad that help us understand why our allergies are increasing in this country and how our immune systems are reacting in our continually advancing world.

Vermund showcased the value of a global health research program that is able to track six times the number of people in a China-U.S. synergistic program than if the research program had only been able to study American populations, yielding valuable trend and individual data that is informing breast cancer developments and potentially other health findings for Americans. “Global health research is studying Americans’ roots — we are much more diverse than anyone ever acknowledged, even as individuals. The return to the American economy is great; we pay money to get more and that’s why funding global health research is truly an investment in our future.”