UMN Fogarty Fellow’s Time in Minnesota Will Inform Research in Kampala

Pictured: Joseph Baluku at the University of Minnesota in June. 

What happens when your hypothesis is wrong?

Joseph Baluku recently had to grapple with this question, finding out his presumptions about tuberculosis’ effect on cardiovascular health didn’t pan out. But the Ugandan physician wasn’t discouraged by the findings — instead, they piqued his interest even more.

“I must say that I’m excited,” said Baluku. “If I found nothing, that would be disappointing. But this is a starting point.”

Baluku was a Fogarty Fellow who completed the program in July. His research during the fellowship year set out to find whether people living with HIV who recovered from tuberculosis were at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

What he found showed the opposite: The people he studied had healthier cardiovascular metabolic profiles than those who never had tuberculosis, save for elevated blood glucose.

But, he said, those findings only serve as motivation to do more research on tuberculosis in Uganda.

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that affects the lungs and is the leading cause of death for people with HIV.  Millions of people die from the disease every year.

The Fogarty Global Health Fellowship, known formally as the Fogarty LAUNCH Research Training Program, is a prestigious training program funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Fogarty International Center that offers a year of mentored research training to postdoctoral trainees and doctoral students. 

The Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility is part of the Northern/Pacific Global Health Research Fellows Training Consortium, which operationalizes the fellowship program. 

CGHSR Executive Director Shailey Prasad, MD, MPH, serves as the principal investigator for the program and facilitates Fogarty Fellows’ connections with UMN mentors in addition to leading weekly research core-competency seminars. The CGHSR team provides program support for the fellowship including travel and financial logistics. 

As a Fogarty Fellow, Baluku spent a year working under mentors Joshua Rhein, MD, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School and David Meya, MD, PhD, an associate professor at Makerere University. Most of Baluku’s time in the program was spent in Uganda. But his final two months of the fellowship took place in Minneapolis, where he had the opportunity to meet with local physicians and researchers.

The visit to Minnesota allowed Baluku to shadow various health care providers, including specialists at Hennepin County Medical Center and researchers at the University of Minnesota Genomics Center. He also spent time at the Minnesota Department of Health, seeing how a public health entity in a high-income country deals with tuberculosis from a programmatic perspective.

“My second month in Minneapolis I spent doing many things, but the important ones were experiencing tuberculosis care in a high-income setting,” said Baluku. “How do they do actual tuberculosis care? How do they do contact training?”

Baluku is interested in the effects tuberculosis has on patients after they recover from the disease. 

“We treat these individuals, they get cured and they go home. We tend to assume that these people are cured, that they are back to their normal life — but that’s not the case,” said Baluku.

Baluku’s experience in Minnesota learning from tuberculosis experts will inform his work in Uganda. But just as valuable, he said, is the guidance he’s received from his fellowship mentors.

“These mentors help you do this fellowship and they also help you with future opportunities: inspiring you to apply for a larger grant, guiding you through your career crossroads and questions you might have,” said Baluku.

When he returns to Uganda, he’ll start researching the effect tuberculosis has on genetic makeup, trying to determine whether tuberculosis-altered DNA leads to predisposition to certain diseases.

Baluku’s time at UMN and as a Fogarty Fellow are experiences he’ll take with him. 

“In Africa there’s a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. This experience and the people I’ve met are part of the village that’s raising me as a researcher,” said Baluku.

“This fellowship opens up doors to create these networks.”