News from around Yale and the World

Drs. Chantal Vogels and Albert Ko explain how a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia is being used to fight mosquito-borne diseases.

Kasia J. Lipska, MD, from the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues compared rates of insulin discontinuation among veterans with T2D receiving basal insulin who initiated treatment with a GLP-1 RA, sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor (SGLT2i) or dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor (DPP-4i) between 2020 and 2022 in a target trial emulation. Data were included for 8,869 matched sets of GLP-1 RA, SGLT2i and DPP-4i initiators.

Amy Kristine Bei, PhD, an affiliate of the Yale Institute of Global Health, received a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship for Senegal for 2026-2027.

Yale School of Medicine (YSM) was awarded a $1.69 million gift from Coefficient Giving to advance the development of an effective parasite vaccine led by Richard “Rick” Bucala, YC ’79, MS ’79, MD, PhD, chief of the Section of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology, Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology), and professor of pathology and of epidemiology (microbial diseases).

The Yale Institute for Global Health (YIGH) Global Health Spark Award provides up to $10,000 in seed funding biannually to support innovative global health projects led by YIGH-affiliated faculty. Designed to catalyze new collaborations, pilot studies, and community partnerships, the award helps investigators launch projects with the potential to grow into larger, sustainable initiatives that improve health outcomes around the world. This spring, YIGH awarded funding to five faculty-led projects. Projects proposed by Jofesa Martinez, PhD and Melanie Sion, MD received support through YIGH, while projects led by Ninani Kombo, MD, Ghada Elhadari, MBBCh, PhD, and Alice Miller, JD were funded through a partnership with the Yale Office of International Affairs through the Yale and the World Partnership Fund, an initiative designed to strengthen international collaborations that advance research, education, and practice on issues of global significance.

This year, the Yale Department of Emergency Medicine welcomed two visiting physicians from Armenia, Lilit Serobyan, MD, and Vache Buniatyan, MD. The doctors, who are among the first graduates of the Yale Armenian Unified Emergency Medicine Residency Program (YUAEMRP), share their reflections on the program and their visit to New Haven, Connecticut.

Luke Davis, MD, MAS, discusses what health care looks like on the ground globally — from the vantage point of someone who has spent his career at the intersection of two of the leading infectious causes of death worldwide: tuberculosis (TB) and HIV.

The Fund for Physician-Scientist Mentorship at Yale School of Medicine honored two faculty members during the Janeway Society Retreat in May for their work supporting early career physician-scientists and helping to advance their career development.

Steven Schiff, MD, PhD, will serve as the next director for the National Institute of Health’s Fogarty International Center and the NIH Associate Director for International Research.