The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare, a global health program led by Indianapolis-based Indiana University and developed in Kenya, will launch new partnership sites in Tamale, Ghana, and Puebla, Mexico, according to statements shared with Becker's.
News of the expansion comes amid AMPATH's 30-year partnership in Kenya, which was initiated between the IU School of Medicine in Indiana and Moi University School of Medicine and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya. The partnership aims to improve health worldwide through partnerships between universities and academic health centers. Work has involved addressing the HIV epidemic, financial and other social determinants of health, infrastructure needs, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new site in Ghana is led by New York City-based NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Ghana's University for Development Studies and Tamale Teaching Hospital, representatives with AMPATH said. In Mexico, Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin and Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla Faculty of Medicine are working with the Ministry of Health of the State of Puebla.
"AMPATH's mission is to improve the health of people in underserved communities by working in partnership with academic health centers, ministries of health and others to build public-sector health systems and promote well-being," said Adrian Gardner, MD, executive director of the AMPATH Consortium of academic health centers and associate dean for global health at the IU School of Medicine, said in a news release. "AMPATH leads with care by delivering and sustaining effective healthcare services in a way that also supports training and research to improve health.
"The expansion of the AMPATH model speaks to the positive and enduring impact of our faculty and students' work both in Kenya and North America."
While the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Dell Medical School represent the AMPATH Consortium in the new partnerships, current members of the AMPATH Consortium also include Providence, R.I.-based Brown University; Durham, N.C.-based Duke University; Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University; New York City-based Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; West Lafayette, Ind.-based Purdue University; Stanford (Calif.) University; University of Alberta in Canada; University of California San Francisco; University of Toronto in Canada; Linköping University in Sweden; and Pasadena, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine.
The new partner sites and IU's role as secretariat for the AMPATH Global network are supported by more than $10 million in donations from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Eli Lilly and Co., and the Lilly Foundation.