Center for Health and Wellbeing

The Center for Health & Wellbeing will manage Grand Challenges projects on Global Health and Infectious Disease. These research projects aim to identify methods to prevent, detect, treat and ultimately eradicate infectious diseases; to provide tools to understand the spread of disease; and to develop strategies for reducing their social and economic costs. This work supports and expands research on infectious disease currently conducted across the University, while simultaneously providing new educational and research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.

The Global Health cooperative builds on a strong base of current Princeton research addressing multiple aspects of infectious disease, including the development of environmental and biological strategies for fighting malaria; modeling the spread of infectious disease and the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria; studying the political, economic and cultural factors that influence the distribution of medicines and the quality of health care in low-income environments; researching the economic and social consequences of morbidity and mortality from infectious disease; and studying ethical issues that stem from advances in biomedicine.

The Global Health cooperative will have three essential elements:

• A focus on multidisciplinary research, integrating knowledge from biology, chemistry, engineering, the social sciences, ethics and public policy.
• The establishment of “research bases” in countries with high levels of infectious disease, to support field research, internships and educational opportunities, and scholarly exchanges with collaborating local institutions.
• The development of new courses on the scientific, technological, economic and social challenges posed by infectious disease.

For more information on Grand Challenges projects on Global Health and Infectious Disease, contact Kristina Graff, Associate Director for the Center for Health and Wellbeing.