The School of Pharmacy of University of Ghana was selected by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) to host Dr. Bernard Appiah, an African Diaspora scholar from the United States to work on a collaborative project on co-development of courses for new postgraduate studies in social and behavioral pharmacy, research collaboration in socio-behavioral interventions for addressing health challenges, and capacity building on how to turn theses into media briefs and policy briefs. 
Dr. Appiah is an assistant professor at the Texas A&M School of Public Health and serves as the director of the school’s Research Program on Public and International Engagement for Health.

During his visit, Dr. Appiah will work with Dr. Irene Kretchy of the School of Pharmacy to conduct content analysis of newspaper reports on medication adherence among Africans and African Americans using newspapers from sub-Saharan Africa and United States, as well as interview experts in socio-behavioral research and pharmacists involved in implementing socio-behavioral interventions, to enable the School of Pharmacy develop socio-behavioral research strategy for postgraduate studies.  
“The information obtained will also guide the development and implementation of courses for new MSc, MPhil and PhD programmes in social and behavioral pharmacy in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Clinical Pharmacy,” said Dr Kretchy.
In addition, there will be a training in writing media briefs and policy briefs for faculty and students to help in the communication of their research findings to a variety of audience.
“Policymakers and journalists hardly read journal articles,” said Dr. Appiah, who is also a science journalist. “This project will equip faculty and students to help translate their research to policymakers and media professionals to promote research uptake.”
The University of Ghana School of Pharmacy project is part of a broader initiative that will pair 55 CADFP scholars with one of 43 higher education institutions and collaborators in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda to work together on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training, and mentoring activities in the coming months.  The visiting Fellows will work with their hosts on a wide range of projects that include controlling malaria, strengthening peace and conflict studies, developing a new master’s degree in emergency medicine, training and mentoring graduate students in criminal justice, archiving African indigenous knowledge, creating low-cost water treatment technologies, building capacity in microbiology and pathogen genomics, and developing a forensic accounting curriculum. To deepen the ties among the faculty members and between their home and host institutions, the program is providing support to several CADFP alumni to enable them to build on successful collaborative projects they conducted in previous years.
The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, now in its fifth year, is designed to increase Africa’s brain circulation, build capacity at the host institutions, and develop long-term, mutually-beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. It is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) in Nairobi, Kenya, which coordinates the activities of the Advisory Council. A total of 335 African Diaspora Fellowships have now been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013.
Fellowships match host universities with African-born scholars (individually or in small groups) and cover the expenses for project visits of between 21 and 90 days, including transportation, a daily stipend, and the cost of obtaining visas and health insurance.