Title:Georgetown names inaugural director of new Global Health Institute

Georgetown has appointed renowned global health scholar Deus Bazira as the inaugural director of the Global Health Institute, which is dedicated to advancing cross-disciplinary research and education on global health.

In his new role, Bazira will harness and amplify Georgetown’s strengths in global health developed over the last two decades by convening and mobilizing researchers and students for broader impact.

“We are grateful to have the leadership, expertise, and experience of one of our world’s leading global health scholars,” says Georgetown President John J. DeGioia. “Dr. Bazira joined our community in 2019 and in the years since has demonstrated a deep commitment to collaboration, an ambitious vision for how Georgetown can contribute to global health, and a deep understanding of the values that guide our mission.”

For more than 25 years, Bazira has worked to integrate scholarship with technical assistance and capacity-building for communities in emerging economies by bringing in-depth, field-level practical experience in building partnerships. An associate professor of medicine in the School of Medicine, Bazira also serves as founding director of Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Practice and Impact, which he will continue to lead.

Born in Uganda, Bazira grew up at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in an environment where access to health care was a privilege, an experience that shaped his ultimate goal: strengthening the resiliency of health systems and ensuring equitable access for all to optimize individual and population health outcomes. His professional journey led him from Uganda to South Africa and then to Maryland before he settled in Washington, DC.

“Building and strengthening the global health community at Georgetown, and creating a platform that allows us to collaborate as an institution, will help elevate and amplify our work,” Bazira says. “We will also be better positioned to undertake interdisciplinary work, to take advantage of opportunities that a faculty member, center, department, or even a school wouldn’t be able to do on their own.”

The Global Health Institute (GHI) builds on the foundation of Georgetown’s university-wide Global Health Initiative, which, for the past five years, modeled how a collective approach to global health at Georgetown could work. The work of GHI will be informed and overseen by the executive vice presidents of the Main Campus, Medical Center, and Law Center.

“This institute aims to galvanize the Georgetown global health community and foster scientific collaboration across disciplines spanning the entire research pipeline—from discovery through to implementation research and practice,” Bazira says. “Our collective success, measured in population health outcomes improvement, is what will guide our day-to-day work.”