The Rockefeller Foundation and Mahidol University deepen commitment to strengthening Asia’s medical, nutrition, and agri-sciences community

With $105,000 in new funding The Rockefeller Foundation will support Mahidol University experts to provide training to medical technology, maternal health and nutrition professionals in ASEAN countries.    

Along with this project, Mahidol University is currently implementing two other programs in collaboration with The Rockefeller Foundation focused on strengthening genomic surveillance facilities and capacity building for measuring diet quality. In total, the Foundation has supported the University with grants amounting to $2.2 millionin recent years. 

Following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Mahidol University on Capacity Building for Medical and Health Science Education Hub in August 2021, the current project announced between The Rockefeller Foundation and Mahidol University is inspired by TICA, Thailand’s primary governmental entity administering the country’s international development cooperation.
 

Mrs Ureerat Chareontoh, Director-General of TICA, noted, “with its mission in enhancing partnerships for development towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), TICA has prioritized its cooperation into four security areas, namely employment, food, environmental and energy, as well as health. The MFA-MU MoU is one of the development collaboration initiatives in response to the aforementioned health security policy. The project focuses on strengthening capacity building and human resource development for medical personnel of Mahidol University in order to provide better services for Thai people and stronger platforms for the transfer of knowledge and expertise to other developing countries.”

TICA’s priorities match closely with those of The Rockefeller Foundation, and this recent collaboration with Mahidol University helps in expanding the reach of the ongoing projects in the areas of public health and nutrition to advance the impact of this shared mission of overall development.

Speaking about this new collaboration, Deepali Khanna, Vice President, Asia, The Rockefeller Foundation said, “Over the years, The Rockefeller Foundation has partnered with Mahidol University on multiple occasions as the University demonstrates continued leadership in medical and scientific research in Asia. With Thailand’s deep investment, history and technology, we are thrilled to support the efforts of Mahidol University and TICA to expand their work in strengthening and creating centres of excellence and institutional building.”

President of Mahidol University, Banchong Mahaisavariya, said, “Mahidol University has set our goals in bridging the gap between knowledge accumulation and knowledge translation to the society. With the support of The Rockefeller Foundation and TICA, we have joined forces in taking the leadership role regionally and globally in fostering health-related networks in response to the pandemic, healthcare services and skill upgrades, food and nutrition centre of excellence and communities of practice in local communities so on. Mahidol University continues to leverage our key resources toecho the learning application for the benefit of mankind.”

The Foundation has two projects in the spheres of public health and nutrition underway with Mahidol University. Through The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Preventive Institute, which aims to revolutionize the way the world approaches pandemic preparedness harnessing the use of data and technology, the Mahidol University Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine (GEM) received a $1.2 million grant in 2021. As a result, the University’s genomic surveillance team has successfully reduced the duration of genomic sequencing of COVID-19 variants from over a month to less than a week, and The GEM team has also expanded its support to other ASEAN genomic surveillance teams, improving their ability to detect and respond to COVID-19 variants and other emerging viral threats and the region’s overall pandemic response capacity.

Mahidol University is also working with the Foundation to fight the double burden of malnutrition (under and over- nutrition existing simultaneously) in the Global South by using a Global Diet Quality Score (GDQS) standard to understand the quality of food in the geography. The $500,000 in funding will help the University build capacity of nutritional professionals to conduct large-scale population surveys using the GDQS to scale up dietary quality and nutritional biomarkers in the population.