The Fogarty International Center (FIC) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announces the funding of 11 research projects under the Health, Environment and Economic Development (HEED) program. These awards, co-funded with 4 NIH institutes and Offices and the U.S. Geological Survey, support innovative developmental and exploratory research and research capacity-building projects in developing countries on topics that combine the issues of health, environment and economic development.

The program aims to gain a better scientific understanding of the relationship between these issues and to suggest policy measures to address the problems associated with them. The combined financial commitment from FIC and its partners is approximately $3 million over a two-year period. The program uses an exploratory-developmental grant mechanism (R21). FIC hopes to launch a larger research project grant (R01) program within three years to build on this initial effort.

"In order to tackle some of the truly critical challenges facing the global community today, we need to understand more fully the linkages between public health, environmental conditions and economic development," said FIC acting director, Sharon Hrynkow, Ph.D. Hrynkow noted that "HEED provides funding for interdisciplinary projects that integrate approaches from the health, social, and natural sciences, and creates teams of researchers from both developed and developing countries to create new scientific knowledge." In addition, the research produced by the grantees is intended to provide evidence and insights for policymakers to use in addressing health, environmental and economic development challenges.