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Latin America
- Mexico
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About
ITEN-Mexico
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Background and
Significance
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Research Priorities
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Activities
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Research Products
- Other Latin
American Countries
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The NIPH is a decentralized organization within
the Mexican Institute of Health, an organization that resembles both the
NIH and the CDC in structure and mission. The central elements of the
mission of the NIPH include: training of human resources in public health
and related disciplines and conducting basic and applied research in the
biological and social sciences. The main objective of the research agenda
of the NIPH is to promote the better understanding and the solution of
important public health problems identified in the National Health Program.
The activities of the NIPH are closely monitored by the Ministry of Health
with bi-annual meetings with the governing board, where the Minister of
Health presides.
The NIPH was created in 1987 and since then, has expanded in terms
of personnel and activities. Currently the NIPH is organized into five
research centers, employing a total of 250 faculty members and researchers,
with an annual budget of 17 million USD. The organizational structure
of the NIPH includes: the Center for Population Health Research, the Center
for Infectious Diseases Research, the Center for Health Systems Research,
the Center for Malaria Research, and the Center for Human Nutrition. The
Mexican School of Public Health is also part of the NIPH, and carries
out its teaching activities with the support of the aforementioned research
centers. The Institute complements its research and training activities
with the dissemination and generation of health information, in conjunction
with two additional centers: the Center for Health Information and the
Center for Health Surveys.
Our collaboration with the NIPH will be focused within the Center for
Population Health Research (CPHR). This Center has an annual federal budget
of approximately 3.5 million USD and is comprised of 67 faculty members.
Among its other responsibilities, the CPHR has the mandate to develop
scientific research and training of human resources, specifically in the
area of tobacco. The CPHR also strives to contribute to the advancement
of scientific knowledge, as well as to the decision-making process in
tobacco prevention, policy and regulation.. In addition, the CPHR has
strong links to National Council for Addiction Control and Prevention
(CONADIC). The CPHR is directed by Dr. Mauricio Hernández-Avila,
who holds a ScD in epidemiology from Harvard, and is considered a leading
scientist in this field. Dr. Hernández-Avila joined the NIPH in
1990 and since then, has founded the division of Environmental Health;
in 1999, he received the charge to develop a tobacco research unit within
the CPHR. The now functioning tobacco research unit is responsible for
the carrying out numerous research projects).
The Mexican School of Public Health (MSPH) located at the NIPH offers
different postgraduate programs at the master's and doctoral level. The
master's level programs include the traditional Master's in Public Health
(18 months duration) and a master's in sciences (24 months duration).
These programs share a common curricula in epidemiology, biostatistics
and social sciences, and offer nine different concentration areas, including
health economics (as well as nutrition, reproductive health, environmental
health and epidemiology, etc.). The concentration in health economics
was first offered in 1996.
Since then the program has received 15 students
with a graduation success rate of 80 percent. This program shares a common
curricula in economics with the Center for Research and Teaching in Economic
(Centro de Investigaciones y Docencias Economicas, CIDE) an academic institution
leader in economics in Mexico.
Identified Areas of Collaboration
Most of the expertise of faculty working within the Tobacco Research Department
faculty at the NIPH is within epidemiology and public health. This is
not surprising because a large proportion of the faculty was trained within
the Science Master's Programs at NIPH. This concentration has its positive
aspects, but also implies that the department is weak in important research
areas such as economy. In order to assist the NIPH in dealing with this
disparity, we propose two mechanisms within this collaboration: 1) short,
intensive training visits 2) prolonged visits. Within the short visit
scheme, NIPH faculty could attend specific courses at the University of
Chicago and then return to Mexico to teach what they learned. During the
longer visits, we propose taking advantage of the existing NIPH sabbatical
program. The NIPH program gives full salary support to their research
staff to carry out one-year visits to other institutions.
Strengthening the Master's in Health Economics
The Master´s program in health economics offered at NIPH enjoys
a high graduation rate, and it's the only program -in Mexico- that offers
Health Economics as a major area of concentration, and thus, is regarded
as one of the nation's most successful programs. However, in conjunction
with the faculty at the NIPH, we have identified several areas and mechanisms
by which this program could be strengthened to include tobacco economics.
The following activities will reinforce this program:
1. Curricula revision and renovation
2. Scholarships to support outstanding students and to motivate enrollments
3. Matching funds to support thesis work
4. Participation of ITEN, including UIC faculty, in the courses offered
in the program.
In previous collaborative efforts the NIPH has identified students that
could attend US based institutions for training. Although this practice
has resulted in the identification of outstanding candidates, and these
have successfully completed their training, it has some disadvantages.
Some of the candidates represent a high cost for the Fogarty program,
as well as the fact that some students work in research topics that may
not be relevant to Mexico, or even that some students will remain in the
U.S. An indirect effect of this drain on human resources is that the quality
of master's students at the NIPH has decreased mainly because the best
students will abandon NIPH programs to go to US based institutions. Although
we believe that student exchange may result in the training of outstanding
individuals, we also think that it may have an indirect adverse effect
on the NIPH training programs. In order to prevent this, we propose a
new collaboration initiative within this application that will strength
the Master´s program at the NIPH. For this end, we will develop
a scholarship program aimed to recruit outstanding candidates to attend
the health economics program at the NIPH and to concentratae in tobacco
economics. This last action will be reinforced through funding for field
work needed for thesis requirements that will be
done in collaboration with researches at UIC.
Background and
Significance
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