Announcing the Georgetown Global Health Institute (GHI) led by Inaugural Director, Deus Bazira
March 27, 2023
Dear Members of the Georgetown University Community:
I write today with the privilege of formally announcing the Georgetown Global Health Institute (GHI) and the new appointment of its inaugural director, Deus Bazira, DrPH, MPH, MBA, BPharm. The Global Health Institute officially launched in July 2022.
Over the past two decades, global health has emerged as an area of strength for our University, with faculty contributing to important global health efforts across our three campuses. In 2017, we launched a university-wide initiative to imagine new ways of collaboration and support for global health.
Our new Global Health Institute builds on the cross-campus and interdisciplinary work of the Initiative. As a university-wide institute, the GHI will deepen the context for our faculty to work together across campuses and disciplines—bringing together many fields, from health, medicine, and science to policy, law, ethics, and international affairs. It will foster collaboration, encourage and expand opportunities for research, and host dialogues that will convene leaders, scholars, practitioners, and community members around urgent global health topics, and it will connect with related efforts focused on issues from health equity to climate and sustainability.
To guide the GHI, we are grateful to have the leadership, expertise, and experience of one of our world’s leading global health scholars, Dr. Bazira. He has more than 25 years of experience in the field of global health, integrating scholarship with technical assistance and capacity-building for communities in emerging economies. Dr. Bazira joined our community in 2019 and in the years since, has demonstrated a deep commitment to collaboration, an ambitious vision for how Georgetown can contribute to global health, and a deep understanding of the values that guide our mission.
He is responsible for leading our Center for Global Health Practice and Impact (CGHPI), which he launched alongside Ambassador Mark Dybul, MD, (C’85 M’92 H’08) in 2019. As he takes on this role guiding the GHI, he will also continue to lead the Center, which works in seven countries, with nearly 500 colleagues supporting global health work related to infectious and non-infectious diseases, implementation and data science, and broader health systems strengthening with funding from U.S. federal agencies, private philanthropic foundations, and industry.
An associate professor of medicine in the School of Medicine, he participates in interdisciplinary teaching collaborations and hosts and mentors several students at the Center. He is also working with colleagues to offer more educational opportunities in global health implementation research for Georgetown students and our international collaborators.
A university-wide committee of faculty will support the Institute’s efforts to engage broadly across our campuses and schools and leverage the diverse perspectives and expertise of our faculty in advancing global health research and action.
I am deeply grateful to Dr. Bazira for taking on this responsibility, for the leadership he has demonstrated since joining our community, and for the vision he brings to this new Institute.
This moment has been made possible because of the outstanding research, teaching, and service of so many of our faculty and of the efforts of the Global Health Initiative, led by Edward Healton, MD, MPH, executive vice president for health sciences and executive dean of the School of Medicine; Tom Banchoff, Ph.D., vice president for Global Engagement and professor in the Department of Government; and John Monahan, JD, (C’83 L’87) senior advisor to the president for global health and professor in the Department of Medicine, to lay the foundation for new kinds of collaborations.
I am grateful for the engagement of so many members of our community in advancing global health, and I look forward to the work of the Institute and the impact it will enable our community to make on the health of communities around the world.
Sincerely,
John J. DeGioia