UWF assistant professor receives fellowship to prestigious institute
Dr. Peter Memiah, assistant professor of epidemiology and public health in the University of West Florida Usha Kundu, MD College of Health, has received a yearlong fellowship to the PRIDE institute. PRIDE stands for Programs to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute sponsors PRIDE.
Memiah will attend the Behavioral Medicine and Sleep Disorders PRIDE Summer Institute in August at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.
“I am grateful for the opportunities this fellowship will provide me, my colleagues and UWF as an institution,” Memiah said. “The PRIDE fellowship will give me an opportunity to sharpen my grant-writing and research skills while working within a network of experts and mentors. This program will help me learn the nuts and bolts of navigating a research career as a junior faculty member and as a scientist, and I can’t wait to get started.”
The institute provides intensive didactic and mentored research training to underrepresented minorities and those with disabilities. The goal of the multidisciplinary training and mentoring program is to inspire participants to conduct research by employing techniques at the forefront of their fields.
Memiah stated in his PRIDE fellowship application that his future research plans emanate from questions raised from his current work.
“I hope to advance my research linking HIV and other chronic diseases, secondly I want to make research more relevant in the context of health care practice,” Memiah stated in the application.
In addition to being an assistant professor at UWF, Memiah has extensive experience in working with UWF students to promote the use of research results for strengthening programs through peer-reviewed publications, reports, presentations and other media. His experience includes several years of disseminating research findings on HIV prevention, care and treatment, adolescent health, maternal and child health, and gender-based violence. He has consulted with the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, UNICEF, Norwegian Mission and United Nations Trust Fund, among other organizations.
Memiah recently finalized the strategic framework for the elimination of mother-to-child transmission 2016-2021, a national document that is a public health priority for Kenya and the World Health Organization. The document highlights strategies aimed at reducing infant/maternal mortality and is critical in primary prevention of HIV and curbing the spread of the epidemic.
Memiah has collaborated with institutions and countries to design and implement quality-improvement programs that ensure optimal client outcomes. He has also designed a results-based data management and utilization training series that simplifies data concepts (epidemiology, statistics, research methods, scientific writing) and enhances the capacity of health care providers in disseminating evidence based information.
For more information about the Usha Kundu, MD College of Health, visit uwf.edu/coh.
