Resilience and Resourcefulness
Lessons From Stanford African Scholars in Global Health
The Stanford African Scholars in Global Health (SASH) program provides valuable insights into navigating recent declines in federal support for global health initiatives. SASH Scholars – drawing from their own experiences as clinicians, researchers, and educators at medical universities in low- and middle- income African countries – emphasize the power of partnership and knowledge exchange to sustain global health programming during times of crisis and uncertainty.
“SASH provides a timely help and opportunity for something very big,” says SASH Scholar Ombeva Malande, MD, of Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya, who is using his SASH training and funding to address the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance in Kenya and neighboring countries. His unique and sustainable approach of incorporating an infectious disease fellowship training program alongside a new infection control program will ensure a new workforce of infectious disease doctors who can run the program for years to come, benefiting countries around East Africa. “We will be offering an opportunity to close to half a billion people to have specialists trained to deal with one of the biggest problems we face in health care,” he said.
Rishi Mediratta, MD, and Alemayehu Toni, MD, discuss their partnership to improve childhood vaccine uptake in Ethiopia through the Stanford African Scholars in Global Health (SASH) Program.
Malande is just one of 24 SASH scholars whom Stanford hosted in 2025. The midcareer physician educators and leaders from nine African countries were selected from a highly competitive pool of nearly 450 applicants. SASH scholars, paired with Stanford faculty mentors, engaged in six-week immersive experiences, where they gained new skills and shared their expertise with the Stanford community. Bidirectional learning forms the core of SASH’s unique approach, allowing Stanford mentors and trainees to gain fresh perspectives from SASH scholars while the scholars acquire new skills at Stanford.
Maha Mohamed, MD, a clinical associate professor of medicine–nephrology at Stanford and a mentor in the SASH program, emphasizes the mutually beneficial learning that occurred during her collaboration with SASH Scholar Mary Kubo, MBChB, MMed, a nephrologist from Kenya. As Kubo sought to gain new skills and insights about increasing vaccination uptake to prevent bacterial infections among patients with chronic kidney disease in Kenya, Mohamed was interested in exploring cost-effective approaches for developing a new kidney transplant program in Zambia. Their collaboration through the SASH program fostered a mutual exchange of ideas and best practices, enabling them to learn from each other’s experiences and ultimately strengthen their programs.
“SASH is not just about teaching; it’s about creating a network of collaboration where we can share ideas and strategies that benefit both high-income and low-resource settings,” Mohamed says.
“Our African scholars have greatly enriched the Stanford medical and educational communities this year. In times of scarcity, the lessons we learn from our scholars about resilience and creativity in global health are more important than ever.” – Michele Barry, MD
Mohamed recounts being inspired by Kubo’s lessons about overcoming funding restrictions in Kenya, including negotiating for cost-sharing with the local government and finding a new way to prevent tuberculosis in transplant patients that avoided the costly step of TB testing. “SASH scholars have many important insights to share with Stanford practitioners about creative and cost-effective approaches at a time of reduced federal funding for health care and medical research,” Mohamed says.
Program founder Michele Barry, MD, director of the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, agrees: “Our African scholars have greatly enriched the Stanford medical and educational communities this year. In times of scarcity, the lessons we learn from our scholars about resilience and creativity in global health are more important than ever.”
Throughout their six weeks at Stanford, scholars participated in clinical training, academic exchange, and mentorship, shadowing clinicians and experts at Stanford hospitals, clinics, and labs. They also presented their areas of expertise during a range of events, including Africa Table lectures co-hosted with the Stanford Center for African Studies, along with networking events with groups like the Stanford Graduate Global Health Network for Stanford postdocs conducting global health research and graduate students studying or interested in global health.
Esohe Ogboghodo, MBBS, for example, participated in a Stanford panel on measles outbreaks, sharing Nigeria’s national response and key strategies that the U.S. can adopt to address misinformation and vaccine hesitancy. At Africa Table lectures, Temesgen Abicho, MD, and Alemayehu Teklu Toni, MD, shared lessons learned while maintaining international collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic – critical partnership lessons that serve us particularly well now at Stanford as the university works to find resourceful ways to accomplish more with less.
Scholar-mentor pairs like Ombeva Malande, MD, and Cybele Renault, MD, meanwhile, exemplify the fact that the most sustainable programs are developed in partnership. Renault’s preexisting working relationship with Malande’s teaching hospital facilitated trust and connections that have enabled the collaboration to flourish.
After their time at Stanford, scholars returned to their academic institutions with additional funding from Pfizer and ongoing virtual Stanford faculty mentorship to conduct yearlong quality improvement projects, ensuring that the spirit of collaboration and learning, along with the impact on patient health in Africa, endures long after their visit.
For instance, Nahom Teshager, MD, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Gondar in Ethiopia, is applying his SASH experience to address a pressing challenge: reducing neonatal hospital-acquired infection and sepsis-related mortality in Northwest Ethiopia. With a targeted goal of reducing neonatal hospital-acquired infection by 30% in 12 months, his work is already contributing to systems-level change.
For Malande, SASH’s emphasis on true partnership and collaboration between countries in the Global South and North has restored a sense of hope in the world, despite the current climate of global uncertainty and insecurity.
“Stanford is providing that star that we can use if and when we think the light at the end of the tunnel has been shut off,” he said.
SASH scholar-mentor pairs like Ombeva Malande, MD, and Cybele Renault, MD, (left to right), exemplify the fact that the most sustainable programs are developed in partnership.
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