Global Environmental & Occupational Health
UIC-Ukraine Public Health Partnership
GLC Celebrates 15 Years of Collaborative Programs
with Ukraine
Daniel Hryhorczuk (Director of the Great Lakes Centers), Ambassador Herbst (U.S. Ambsassdor to Ukraine), Natalie Jaresko (Head of Western Enterprise Fund), and Susan Scrimshaw (Dean of UIC School of Public Health)
On September 1, 2004, Susan Scrimshaw, PhD, Dean of the University
of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health (UIC SPH),
and Daniel Hryhorczuk, MD, Professor and Director of the
Great Lakes Centers at UIC SPH, hosted a reception at the
Mariinsky Palace in Kyiv celebrating 15 years of collaborative
programs between UIC and Ukrainian research and academic
institutes. Over
50 people attended, including Mr. Herbst, the U.S. Ambassador
to Ukraine and Mr. Christopher Crowley, the Head of the
USAID Mission in Ukraine. Additional
UIC faculty in attendance included Irina Dardynsakia, MD,
PhD, Research Associate Professor at SPH and Christine
Hryhorczuk, DDS, MSPH, Clinical Assistant Professor in
the UIC College of Dentistry. Dr.
Scrimshaw welcomed the guests and expressed UIC’s commitment
to continuing our academic partnerships with Ukrainian
public health institutes. Dr.
Hryhorczuk presented an overview of joint accomplishments
over the past 15 years in training, research, and capacity
building.. Academician
Elena Lukyanova, Director of the Institute of Pediatrics,
Obstetrics, and Gynecology expressed the value of the partnerships
from the Ukrainian point of view. Ambassador Herbst underscored
the value of academic partnerships and the commitment of
the U.S. government to continue these types of academic
exchanges.
Over the past decade, UIC’s collaborative programs in Ukraine
have been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health
Fogarty International Center for “International Research and
Training in Environmental and Occupational Health.” UIC’s
major collaborative research program has been the “Family
and Children of Ukraine” study which is the Ukrainian component
of the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood. UIC’s
research program on the environmental health of children in Mariupol
Ukraine was selected as the joint U.S-Ukrainian environmental health
study under the Kuchma-Gore Commission. UIC is also providing
data management support to the U.S.-Ukraine bi-national study on “Thyroid
Cancer in Children Following the Chornobyl Reactor Accident.” UIC
has co-sponsored over ten international conferences in Ukraine and
has hosted 10 Ukrainian Visiting Scientists to UIC for training.
UIC’s major institutional partners in Ukraine include in Kyiv,
the Institute of Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Gynecology; the Institute
of Occupational Medicine; the Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology;
the Institute of Endocrinology and Metabolism; the Institute of Ecohygiene
and Toxicology; and Kyiv State Medical University; in Donetsk, the
Institute of Occupational Medicine; and in Chernivtsi, the Institute
of Medico-Ecologic Problems. UIC’s newest partners include
the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and the Kyiv Institute
of Postgraduate Medicine, who are partnering to establish the first
school of public health in Ukraine.
Academician Yuri Kundiev, Vice President of the Ukrainian Academy
of Medical Sciences, stated that UIC’s support of Ukrainian scientific
institutes occurred during the most critical period of transition,
when many institutes could not have survived without international
partnerships. Academician Elena Lukyanova highlighted the collaborative Family
and Children of Ukraine research program and how its results have
been incorporated into national policy on maternal and childhood health
in Ukraine. As Ambassador Herbst indicated to our Ukrainian partners
at the Mariynsky Palace, “these academic partnership programs
have the full support of the U.S. government.”
More: UIC Helps Ukraine Inaugurate New Program in Public Health Management |
