In an effort to boost medical research and enhance global health care training, Michigan State University is creating new strategic partnerships with colleges and teaching hospitals in South Africa and the Dominican Republic.

The initiative, led by Reza Nassiri, professor and acting director of MSU’s Institute of International Health, will include faculty and student exchanges and may eventually expand collaborations in clinical research projects.

“MSU strives to be a global leader in health and medicine,” Nassiri said. “By linking with foreign schools and hospitals, we not only benefit from amazing training opportunities for our physicians but also create potential for collaborative research on global health issues.”

“Our students will have the chance to see pathologies that are not common in America and be given a unique opportunity to develop cultural competency while brushing up their clinical skills,” he says.

The graduate medical education programs already in place are with South Africa’s East London Hospital Complex, which is made up of two teaching hospitals and several rural clinics, and the Santo Domingo HIV/AIDS Clinic in the Dominican Republic. That clinic serves as a reference center not only for the Dominican Republic but also for Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean.

Expanding MSU’s global outreach in health and medicine is a top priority for Nassiri, who joined MSU in spring 2009 as acting director of the Institute for International Health and also as an assistant dean in the College of Osteopathic Medicine.

In addition to building new partnerships, Nassiri is working with colleagues on campus to create multidisciplinary focus groups around three hot medical research topics—women’s health, environmental health and HIV/ AIDS. Faculty and student exchanges within these areas are already taking place. A physician from the Dominican Republic is studying HIV/AIDS medications with associate professor of internal medicine, Peter Gulick. The effort is focused on developing a clinical research project in the future.

MSU’s Institute for International Health is a cross college collaboration that facilitates faculty and student health research and academic interests in international health projects.