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Ukraine has been facing a severe humanitarian crisis since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, leading to significant internal displacement. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine encounter major healthcare challenges due to destroyed facilities and shortages of medical professionals. Among these IDPs, women living with, or at increased risk for HIV, are particularly vulnerable to adverse health consequences and disruptions in their access to necessary prevention and treatment services.

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This project aims to explore the health needs of HIV-affected women IDPs in Ukraine, focusing on physical and mental health topics and barriers to accessing medical and public health services. Through qualitative interviews with service providers and women IDP, the study seeks to understand the specific challenges faced by this population. By partnering with local NGOs and service providers, the project will gather data and develop a comprehensive understanding of these women's healthcare needs. The findings will inform the development of a survey to measure the scope of these needs, with the ultimate aim of informing policy and program development to improve health outcomes for HIV-affected women IDP in Ukraine.The project goals include finding intervention opportunities to empower women IDP to better manage their health and the health of their families.

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Expected outcomes include increased awareness of the health challenges faced by women IDPs in Ukraine, collaborative journal publications, a stakeholder report in the country, and the potential for a larger-scale quantitative study. The project seeks to contribute to health equity by identifying and addressing the unique needs of this vulnerable population, ensuring improved access to necessary medical and public health services.

This research project aims to assess the environmental risk factors for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in Ethiopia’s Somali region—an area within Africa’s high-incidence belt for this deadly cancer. Despite a high burden of disease and anecdotal reports of ESCC affecting even young adults, there has been little to no formal research conducted in this population. The interdisciplinary team, composed of University of Michigan faculty and Ethiopian collaborators at St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, will conduct a cross-sectional study to document known and suspected ESCC exposures—including the consumption of extremely hot foods and beverages, khat use, and pesticide exposure—and will collect biospecimens for future analysis. A key feature of this work is its strong foundation in community partnership, cultural sensitivity, and capacity building, including training local staff in data collection and biospecimen handling.

By generating foundational data in an underserved and understudied region, this project addresses urgent global health equity concerns. ESCC is a cancer of poverty, often diagnosed too late for treatment, with survival rates below 5% in many low-resource settings. The outcomes of this feasibility study will help shape larger, more definitive studies that could lead to preventive interventions tailored to the local context.

This pilot project addresses a critical health equity issue in Agbogbloshie, a community in Accra, Ghana, long known for its informal electronic waste (e-waste) recycling activities. With toxic metal exposure from open-air burning and manual dismantling now occurring dangerously close to residential areas, women and children—historically overlooked in research—face growing health risks. This study will recruit mother-child pairs to assess baseline toxic metal exposure and nutritional status, pilot a targeted dietary intervention, and measure changes in health outcomes over a six-month period. The intervention aims to empower families with the tools and knowledge to reduce the health impacts of toxic exposures through improved nutrition.

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The project fills a longstanding research gap by shifting the focus from e-waste workers to nearby vulnerable populations and testing a cost-effective, community-based solution. Through blood sampling, metabolic health assessments, and participatory nutrition education, the team hopes to show that simple dietary changes can mitigate the adverse effects of environmental pollutants. Results from this work will inform larger-scale interventions and future policy changes, while also helping to build local capacity and generate momentum for broader, community-led action. Ultimately, this project seeks to improve long-term health outcomes for women and children in low-resource settings who are disproportionately burdened by environmental toxins.

This project aims to strengthen the global evidence base on climate change, vulnerability, and health by piloting and validating a climate shock survey in Chakaria—a coastal region highly exposed to extreme weather events. Chakaria’s vulnerability to cyclones, floods, and heatwaves presents a critical opportunity to understand how climate stressors affect health outcomes, particularly among the poorest and most marginalized. The team will collect household-level data on climate exposure and health burden, deploy low-cost environmental monitoring equipment, and integrate these data with two decades of health and demographic surveillance data. This initiative addresses an urgent equity gap: while research has documented broad health impacts of climate change, there is a lack of granular, spatially-resolved data on how these impacts intersect with social inequality in vulnerable communities.

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Beyond survey validation, the project will build a robust climate-health research and surveillance platform in Bangladesh that can inform locally tailored resilience strategies and policies. By linking high-resolution climate data with socioeconomic and health information, the study will generate actionable insights into how wealth, infrastructure, and geography mediate health risks during climate shocks. The outcomes will not only benefit Bangladesh—ranked among the top nations for climate risk—but also provide a replicable model for other low- and middle-income countries facing similar challenges. In the long term, this work is designed to support climate-adaptive public health systems and catalyze large-scale interventions that protect vulnerable populations from the worsening impacts of climate change.