The East African Health and Behavior Fellowship Program will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a conference on Health and Social Change in Africa on Wednesday and Thursday, April 14 and 15, in the library of the Faculty Club. Julius Meme, director, Kenya Medical Services, and David Hamburg, president emeritus of the Carnegie Corp., will be keynote speakers. Conference themes include research by fellows on subjects such as HIV/AIDS and reproductive and mental health. Sessions will also be devoted to ethical dilemmas in medical education and practice, and the future of African universities. All members of the Harvard community are invited.

The Program, which has complementary institutional strengthening activities in Kenya and Tanzania, represents a unique collaboration among three universities and their medical and social science faculties -- the Medical School's Department of Social Medicine, the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The Carnegie Corp. has supported the program for a decade. The mission has been to strengthen the research capabilities of the participating African universities through training and research integrating theoretical, methodological, and policy perspectives from the social and medical sciences. The larger goal is to contribute to the health of African communities through programs of education and research in social medicine.

The Department of Social Medicine at the Medical School was founded on an interdisciplinary philosophy, which guides its collaborative educational and research programs in the faculties of Medicine and Arts and Sciences. Visiting scholars and fellows have long contributed to the interdisciplinary and cross-national exchanges that characterize the Department's intellectual projects in social medicine ‹ in medical anthropology and sociology, mental health research, social studies of infectious diseases, as well as the history of medicine, medical ethics, and programs in health and social justice.

The decade-long collaboration of the Department of Social Medicine with the University of Nairobi and the University of Dar es Salaam has not only led to new interfaculty training and research programs in these important African universities, but has also provided unique contributions to the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary activities in which Harvard students, fellows, and faculty engage.

The fellowship program has provided advanced training to 32 faculty members (17 social scientists and 15 physicians) from Kenya and Tanzania, building a critical mass of scholars committed to interdisciplinary research and education in social sciences and medicine. Fellows have established sustainable interdisciplinary programs at their universities: the Center for Social Science and Medicine in Tanzania and the Interfaculty Collaborative Program in Kenya. Each institution has been strengthened and the cultures of the universities have been influenced through incorporation of programs, including the adoption of new curricula at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education levels. Fellows have become leaders in research in social science and medicine and have published widely. Many have achieved positions of power and influence within their universities and in health policy fields in their societies and globally.