Fogarty Fellowship Applications Now Open for 2022-23

The Fogarty International Center is part of the National Institutes or Health.

Applications for the Fogarty Fellows and Scholars program for 2022-23 are now available. The Global Health Fellowship Program is a 12-month clinical research training program for post-doctorate trainees and doctoral students in the health professions in the US and post-doctorate trainees from low- and middle-income countries. The program is sponsored by the National Institute of Health’s Fogarty International Center in partnership with several NIH Institutes and Centers. Moi University is a training site for the Northern Pacific Global Health (NPGH) Fellows Training Consortium and the Vanderbilt-Emory-Cornell-Duke (VECD) Consortium, but additional opportunities exist in other consortia. For a full list of consortia please visit this website. Go to the individual consortium page for application details and eligibility. Fellowships begin July 2022.

Experience as a Fogarty Fellow so far…

Jepchirchir (Chiri) Kiplagat, PhD, AMPATH investigator and assistant director of research, is a members of the 2021-22 cohort of NPGH Fellows. Dr. Kiplagat shares her experience so far:

To be selected as a Fogarty Fellow was not only exciting for me, but opened doors to a myriad of opportunities. I must confess that at first I underestimated the prestige that comes with being a Fellow – including speaking one-to-one with the ‘who is who’ in the research and funding worlds. As a Fellow, I had the opportunity to attend a two-week orientation meeting, although virtually and sometimes late into the night, it was fulfilling in many ways.

We had Dr. Francis Collins, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Roger Glass, and many other directors of various NIH Institutes among many distinguished speakers during the orientation period. The two-minute opportunity to share my elevator speech with Dr. Roger Glass and receive his feedback on how my research can make an impact in the HIV field was not only exciting, but reassured me as I develop my niche in my research career.

Jepchirchir (Chiri) Kiplagat, PhD.

There has been so much that has happened in my life, and I honestly attribute it to the Fogarty Fellowship. My mentors have guided me on a path that is continuing to grow my career. Separate from my Fogarty proposal in which data collection is just starting, in the past six months, I have worked with my mentors in writing an invited review paper and conducting retrospective review to assess patient outcomes, some of which has led to an invitation to an organizing committee for the Lancet Summit on HIV and Healthy Longevity that will be held in February 24-25, 2022. 

I would encourage anyone meeting the eligibility criteria to apply for the Fogarty Fellowship opportunity. It is hard to articulate in writing the feeling that comes with that letter of award, but anyone who has been there shares that feeling. I challenge you to take that step today and put in that application. If you need help, reach out to those who have been successful in their application – they will provide you with a tip or two to help make the process a little easier. 

Refecting on the Impact of being a Fogarty Fellow…

Michael Scanlon, MPH, MA, is the assistant director of research for the IU Center for Global Health and AMPATH Consortium and was a Fogarty Fellow in the 2019-20 cohort. Although the pandemic interrupted his Fogarty year in Kenya, the experience has continued to influence his career.

The Fogarty community is amazing. The faculty leads at NPGH are incredibly knowledgeable and supportive. My cohort of Fellows were from around the US and around the world with backgrounds in basic science, medicine, public health, and social sciences, which led to incredibly rich discussions about global health and research.

The importance of good mentorship is certainly one lesson from my Fogarty year that I will take with me. The Fogarty program provides a lot of built-in mentorship with monthly cohort calls and also what to look for in a good mentor as well as how to be a better mentee.

Presentation by Michael Scanlon at the 47th Annual Kenya Medical Association Conference in 2019 on labor unions and strikes in public health sectors.

Another lesson is that things don’t often go as planned, and that you need to be flexible and adaptable. Obviously the COVID-19 pandemic is an extreme example of this, but I think the Fogarty team, as well as my mentorship team, really helped me make the best of a difficult situation and fellowship year.

The Fogarty fellowship gave me a lot of insight into the NIH, particularly how they identify and define their priorities for global health research and what they are looking for in successful grant applications. This knowledge will certainly be impactful as I start to think about my own research and grant opportunities.  

I would tell anyone who is considering applying to go for it and apply! I was a bit hesitant that the Fogarty program would be a good fit for me given my research focus on labor unions and strikes in the Kenyan public health sector. I was thrilled to be accepted and the mentorship I have received from the NPGH program and community has been wonderful.

Read more from recent Fogarty Fellow Sigrid Collier, MD, MPH, and Fogarty Scholar Grant Callen, MD who conducted research in collaboration with the AMPATH partnership.

The NPGH and VECD Consortia have partnerships with Moi University.

All of the global health consortia and the countries with which they partner.