Dr. Omolola Adepoju, health services researcher and clinical associate professor at the University of Houston’s Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, has been awarded a prestigious Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship to support high-caliber scholarly research and education projects at the University of Ghana Medical School.
Adepoju, who was recently named director of the Humana Integrated Health System Sciences Institute at UH, will spend three weeks in Ghana this summer.
“I chose Ghana because I have deep connections there,” Adepoju said. “This opportunity is truly humbling as it allows me to return to my roots in an academic role in the same country where my father was born and the same institution where he graduated.”
Among the projects Adepoju will work on during her visit is the development of an inter-institutional medical rotation program that will give students at the Fertitta Family College of Medicine a new and unique educational experience.
“Being a Carnegie Fellow shows the University’s commitment to global health initiatives and will help me better prepare our students to join an increasingly diverse workforce,” Adepoju said. “Exposing them to different healthcare systems, cultural practices and diseases that are prevalent in these regions is invaluable for producing well-rounded and culturally competent primary care physicians.”
Adepoju is a world-renowned scholar and innovative researcher whose groundbreaking work focuses on health care inequities and outcomes in underserved communities and the non-medical drivers of health. She sees this fellowship as a golden opportunity to highlight the College of Medicine’s mission on the world’s stage.
“Houston is the fourth largest and most diverse city in the U.S.,” Adepoju said. “Building partnerships like this will enable us to collaborate on research, create joint academic programs and exchange faculty which will only raise our profile globally.”
The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program is designed to strengthen capacity at the host institutions and develop long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa, the United States, and Canada. It is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with the Association of African Universities. Since the program’s inception in 2013, nearly 650 African Diaspora Fellowships have been awarded for scholars to travel to African countries.