News Release

Duke, UNC Get $1.65 Million GSK Grant

(Reprinted from the Herald Sun newspaper, Durham NC)

By JIM SHAMP, The Herald-Sun

DURHAM -- A $1.65 million grant from a foundation linked to GlaxoSmithKline is to jump-start a three-year collaboration between the UNC and Duke health systems to target improved hospital patient safety, reduced race-based health disparities and better handling of mental illness and HIV -- locally and globally.

Part of the grant from the North Carolina GSK Foundation is to help support six months of planning by leaders of the two local academic medical institutions, starting in January.

The rest is for a 30-month shakedown cruise in which the schools' training programs for doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other care providers are to incorporate and test some of the collaboration's newly developing strategies and findings.

It's a unique, and possibly door-opening, partnership floated months ago as a possibility by GSK principals and embraced by the top doctors at the institutions renowned for their sports rivalries but increasingly bonded in medical endeavors.

Duke's Victor Dzau and UNC's William Roper, who stepped to the thrones of their respective institutions within four months of one another last year, frequently profess their admiration for one another and their desire to bring the highly rated public and private institutions into more joint activities.

Roper became the dean of the UNC School of Medicine, vice chancellor for medical affairs and CEO of the UNC Health Care System in March 2004. Dzau became Duke University's chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of the Duke University Health System last July.

"This was an idea whose time had come," said Dzau. "Bill and I clicked with just a couple of phone calls. We felt it would be a unique opportunity to get together and collaborate on some of the most pressing issues of medicine today, so we said, 'Let's go for it.' "

Roper agreed. "Victor and I see this as an opportunity to take what is already a healthy relationship and make it even better," he said.

He said Glaxo has a decades-long history of separate support for Duke and UNC, but "everyone involved is taking real pride in knowing that this is a joint activity. I'm just delighted that GSK has put a real premium on this."

Chris Viehbacher, president of GSK's U.S. pharmaceuticals division, praised Dzau and Roper for their "very strong leadership needed to get institutions like this to collaborate."

"In a few short months Victor and Bill have bridged the Tobacco Road gap," said the Durham-based executive. "I think this is a huge advantage for all of us, to have these world-renowned institutions come together to face some of biggest health care problems we have today. These two institutions are extremely important in the biopharmaceutical sector."

Duke and UNC researchers have published several major research studies showing differences in treatments and outcomes between white patients and those of minority races. They've both also been heavily involved in HIV and AIDS research and treatment programs, in the Triangle and in Africa.

Both institutions also have pledged to spend human and monetary capital to find, and apply, the best practices needed to protect people from medical errors. And both share some of the institutional "growing pains" as North Carolina's mentally ill are moved out of state hospitals and into community-based treatment programs.

Glaxo's product line and corporate interests touch virtually all these areas, noted Viehbacher, though the foundation grant is not meant to be a marketing tool.

"These are big challenges, big issues," said Roper. "We don't expect to have breakthrough solutions to these problems that will, in a few months, make them go away. But it's an important beginning. We think it'll enable us to foster lots of joint activities that we can take to other funders, yielding even more opportunity for UNC and Duke to work together."

Links related to this article:
GSK Foundation: www.gsk.com/community/ncfound.htm

URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-676176.html

December 7, 2005