Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases
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New NIH director makes global health a priority

francis collinsFrancis Collins, MD, PhD

September 4, 2009 -- Earlier this summer President Barack Obama nominated Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, physician and geneticist, and an alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, to be director of the National Institutes of Health.

The director of the NIH presides over an organization which distributes $30-billion a year in federal money and is the single largest source of money for academic research in the United States. The agency has been allocated $10.4-billion from the $787-billion economic-stimulus measure enacted this year by Congress.

In a recent address to the NIH, Collins introduced some of this top priorities. Among them is an emphasis on global health, specifically, to “expand global health efforts beyond AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, and build research capacity in resource-poor environments" (from NIAID Funding News, August 26, 2009).

“Having an NIH director with such support for global health issues is very encouraging,” said Myron Cohen, MD, director of the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases at UNC. “I think Dr. Collins is a real visionary,” he said.

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Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases contact: Lisa Chensvold, (919) 843-5719, lisa_chensvold@med.unc.edu.