GIDI brings together UVA researchers and their international partners who are experts in topics related to global infectious diseases. Combating global infectious diseases requires the synergistic efforts of scientists, policymakers, clinician investigators, social scientists, engineers, caregivers, legal scholars, and business experts. All of them are represented in GIDI's membership. Since "what is global is local" and Charlottesville is one flight away from anywhere in the world, our research can be applied from central Virginia to a community across the world.
GIDI has identified three topics of research interest that are of critical importance to human health worldwide and are distinguishing for UVA:
1. Outbreaks with Pandemic Potential - emerging and emergent infectious diseases like flu, Zika, Ebola, and many others
2. Diarrheal Diseases in Children - bacteria, viruses, and parasites that kill millions of children under the age of 5 worldwide every year, and can lead to physical and cognitive deficits in survivors
3. Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) - how bacteria and other infectious agents that have gained resistance to most or all drugs to treat them
We will enable these and other topics with five interacting methodologies: Diagnostics, Mechanisms of Disease, Interventions, Implementation, and Policy.
To support global infectious diseases research at UVA, the Institute has initiated a collaborative seed granting program and a proposal planning grant program. We are also taking a variety of approaches to build and support new teams in priority topic areas. Click the links on the left for more information about these approaches.