Jeffrey P. Koplan Global Health Award Recognizes Emory Leadership and Impact to Improve Health Equity Worldwide
The Emory Global Health Institute (EGHI) announced the creation of the Jeffrey P. Koplan Global Health Award and named Manoj Jain, MD, MPH, as its inaugural recipient at EGHI’s event, InFocus: Emory excellence in global health, on Nov. 16, 2022.
Named in honor of EGHI founder and former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, MPH, this endowed award celebrates Emory University’s innovative students, faculty, or staff as they lead change in a relentless pursuit to improve global health and health equity.
As the award winner, Dr. Jain was recognized for his efforts to address tuberculosis (TB) in India. The Collaboration to Eliminate Tuberculosis Among Indians (CETI), founded by Drs. Jain and Salil Bhargava, conducted trainings for TB district officers to implement a quality improvement approach toward TB treatment in India, where the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the government’s efforts to eliminate TB.
Tuberculosis is a preventable and treatable infectious disease that kills more than 4,000 people every day. Nearly 2 billion people are infected worldwide, and approximately 10 million people become ill every year. The disease saw a 4.5-percent increase in global cases in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Dr. Jain’s work could not be more urgent," Dr. Koplan said during the EGHI InFocus program. "This is the first time in many years that we are seeing an increase in the number of TB cases and, in particular, drug-resistant TB."
Dr. Jain—an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Emory University’s School of Medicine and Rollins School of Public Health—and the CETI team are credited with boosting the rates of TB diagnosis and treatment in high-burden communities via a proven, low-cost, scalable Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model.
- Out of 779 districts in the Nikshay database in India, CETI enrolled 546 in training in 15 days.
- 437 completed the required PDSA Boosting TB Notification Training.
- TB notification improvement was evaluated by district level, and of the participating 437 districts, 239 (55%) demonstrated improvement over the intervention period.
Boosting TB notification in India is an important example of how Emory’s excellence in global health saves lives and strengthens health security worldwide.
Watch Dr. Jain accepting the Jeffrey P. Koplan Global Health Award
Your contribution to the Jeffrey P. Koplan Global Health Award endowment will help Emory’s faculty, staff, and students improve health and health equity worldwide.
Learn more about EGHI’s mission to unite students, faculty, and partners across disciplines in research, programs, training, and discourse that empower communities and improve global health.