In 2003, Celine Gounder and a student colleague, Carolyn Hettrich, initiated and created global health student programs for first year and fourth year medical students. Celine also worked with medical student Laura Certain to help create the Western Regional International Health Conference and the Global Health Pathway. All of these programs were integrated into the Department of Global Health in 2007 and still exist today.

By Bobbi Nodell

A collaboration involving UW Medicine researchers reached a major milestone toward helping investigators create drug therapies and vaccines for some of the world’s major infectious diseases.

The group solved 1,000 protein structures from more than 70 infectious disease organisms.

Understanding protein structures -- the basis of drug therapy and vaccines -- is key to understanding how infectious diseases are different from us, said Dr. Wesley Van Voorhis, head of the Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the UW School of Medicine.

Thousands of academic faculty and community physicians are affiliated with the patient care, educational and research endeavors of UW Medicine. They work for their patients and to improve the health of the public locally, regionally and globally.

For National Doctors Day, March 30, 2017, UW Medicine put together a statistical and informational snapshot. 

Read about UW Medicine's doctors

“I want to live in a reality where we take vaccines for granted,” says Augustine Ajuogu. He grew up in Nigeria, where he saw firsthand the devastating effects of diseases like tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. In fact, he lost an uncle to TB.

Now a third-year medical student at the UW School of Medicine, Ajuogu has a goal.

“I’m focused on reducing the impact of treatable diseases, and the way I want to do that is through vaccines and drugs,” he says. “I imagine a world free from the threat of infectious diseases.”

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