The Moi-Brown Partnership for HIV Biostatistics Training, a research training program administered by the Brown Global Health Initiative and directed by the School of Public Health's Department of Biostatistics, has been awarded $1.6 million in renewed funding. For the next five years, a federal grant from the NIH Fogarty International Center will fund advanced biostatistics training and educational collaboration between Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya and Brown University, benefiting students, faculty, and HIV research capacity in Kenya.
Despite substantial advances in research and educational capacity in sub-Saharan Africa, many leading universities are only beginning to develop graduate-level training in statistics for health research. African biostatisticians are severely under-represented in international research teams, and many HIV research programs in sub-Saharan Africa continue to rely on partners from the United States, Canada, and Europe for implementation of advanced methods for design and analysis.
Since 2014, NAMBARI has expanded statistical expertise at Moi University focused on HIV research, including training five Kenyans who received masters of biostatistics at Brown. The program conducted several advanced training workshops in Eldoret, targeting faculty and professional statisticians, data analysts, and data scientists from Moi University and from other research institutions in sub-Saharan Africa.
Joseph Hogan, ScD, the Carole and Lawrence Sirovich professor of public health, professor of biostatistics, and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Brown, and Ann Mwangi, PhD’11 Associate Professor of Biostatistics at Moi University, will continue to co-lead NAMBARI. The program will expand research and curricular capacity in HIV-related biostatistics and advanced quantitative methods at Moi and will lay the foundation for sustainable growth in this field. Over the next five year, the training program will provide masters-level training at Brown for new Kenyan trainees along with providing PhD and post-doctoral training at Brown and Moi. NAMBARI will facilitate a revision and expansion of the biostatistics curriculum at Moi through faculty development and will continue annual training workshops on advanced biostatistical methods at Moi for faculty members at Moi and professionals throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
NAMBARI responds to the acute need for building statistical and data analytic capacity for HIV research in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa by laying the groundwork at Moi University to develop the next generation of experts in HIV data science.