The Yale Institute for Global Health (YIGH) has named Drew Cameron, PhD, and Kaveh Khoshnood, PhD, as the 2025 Hecht Global Health Faculty Network Award recipients. Cameron’s project focuses on improving hypertension care among urban market vendors in Uganda while Khoshnood’s is centered on remotely strengthening Sudan’s disease surveillance system through digital innovation and community-led approaches.
Established to foster new global health research and initiatives, the Hecht Global Health Faculty Network Award provides up to $50,000 for projects led by YIGH Faculty Networks, which are groups of Yale faculty who come together to establish a sustained, collaborative partnership focused on a particular topic or region. The funding is designed to help the grantees successfully launch their work and pursue future funding opportunities.
The 2025 Hecht award recipients embody the inspiring and innovative research that the YIGH Faculty Support Initiative and Faculty Networks seek to promote. The Institute is grateful for ongoing support of this program, and we look forward to witnessing the impact of these exciting projects on the health of communities around the world.
Michael Cappello MD, YIGH Interim Director and Professor of Public Health, Pediatrics and Microbial Pathogenesis
Mitigating Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Uganda’s Urban Markets (MARKET-Uganda, a pilot study)
Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of premature death in Uganda, with hypertension often going undiagnosed and untreated—especially among low-income urban populations. The MARKET-Uganda pilot project targets market vendors, a high-risk group facing barriers to care due to long hours, poverty, and limited access to medications. The study will measure baseline hypertension control, explore patients' preferences and willingness to pay for treatment, and map the existing drug supply landscape. By working with local partners Development Initiatives International and health authorities, the project lays the foundation for a future randomized trial to test innovative, market-based solutions for improving blood pressure control in underserved communities.
Hypertension is silently harming too many working Ugandans. With MARKET-Uganda, our interdisciplinary team is testing new ways to bring blood pressure care directly into the markets where people work and live—linking education, access to medications, and habit-supporting tools to make long-term care more possible.
SHIELD–Sudan: Strengthening Health Intelligence in Conflict-Affected Settings
- Kaveh Khoshnood, PhD – Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases), Yale School of Public Health; Program Co-Director, Global Health Ethics Program, Yale Institute for Global Health
- Hani Mowafi, MD, MPH – Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Yale School of Medicine; Chief, Section of Global Health and International Emergency Medicine, Emergency Medicine
- Faculty Network: Yale Global Health Ethics Network
Amid Sudan’s ongoing conflict and the collapse of public health infrastructure, this project aims to remotely restore and modernize the country’s disease surveillance system using digital platforms and community-based reporting tools. In collaboration with key partners, the initiative will pilot context-appropriate technologies to enable real-time outbreak detection and evidence-based decision-making in crisis-affected areas. The Yale team includes members of the Yale Global Health Ethics Network, postdoctoral scholars, and both PhD and MPH alumni from the Yale School of Public Health, fostering capacity building and advancing research on digital surveillance in fragile settings.
This award supports a bold vision to transform public health surveillance in conflict-affected settings, driven by digital innovation and grounded in local and global expertise. Between 2024 and 2025, close to 100,000 people in Sudan have been affected by suspected cholera, and over 2,400 have lost their lives—many in communities already facing immense hardship due to war. These are not just statistics; they are mothers, children, elders, and families whose suffering could be prevented. Strengthening surveillance is not simply a technical upgrade, it is a vital, life-saving investment in the health, dignity, and resilience of the Sudanese people.