Friday, March 14, 2025
3/14/2025
PROJECT ABSTRACT Mozambique has made considerable strides in its national HIV response, specifically in its progress towards the lofty UNAIDS 95-95-95 goals. Yet, despite this progress, significant gaps persist, including numerous incident infections, large numbers of persons living with HIV (PLWH) unaware of their status, and challenges in achieving viral load suppression in certain groups. Further, the country is yet to optimally leverage newer data- driven and genetics-based approaches for personalized HIV care, and for molecular epidemiology of the disease. To address these gaps, Mozambique must build its biomedical informatics (BMI) research capacity. BMI focuses on using computational and information sciences approaches in biology (primarily genomics and proteomics) and health disciplines (primarily clinical & public health). Leveraging proven leadership and expertise as Mozambique’s lead HIV Strategic Information partner and highly successful partnerships between Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), we propose the Vanderbilt-Mozambique Biomedical Informatics (VM-BMI) Training and Research program. The VM-BMI is designed to sustainably equip Mozambican scientists with skills to advance progress towards HIV epidemic control through high-quality BMI-based research that is relevant to the country. To build such capacity and accomplish this objective, we propose the following three Specific Aims: 1) Train six Mozambican faculty fellows in BMI to build UEM’s capacity for a self-sustaining HIV-focused BMI research portfolio. This multi-faceted BMI training will occur during Year 1 and Year 2 of the program. 2) Develop and implement a BMI track within the existing master’s in informatics program at UEM. Given that this is a new program and faculty expertise and capacity needs to be established/expanded, implementation and enrollment of students into this new BMI track will begin in Year 3 of the program. 3) Conduct annual HIV-related BMI workshops and bootcamps at UEM to provide BMI research training and practical experience addressing HIV-relevant research questions in Mozambique (targeting 20 individuals per year for each workshop and bootcamp for a total 200 trainees in five years). To our knowledge, this will not only be the first BMI training program in Mozambique, but also the first in all Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) countries in Africa, training upwards of 216 trainees. At the end of the 5- year VM-BMI program, we will have equipped UEM to: (a) lead a fully-fledged BMI-based HIV research portfolio, (b) support a full BMI master’s program, and (c) better address the HIV epidemic in the country.
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