Berkeley Public Health partners with Gilead for new research and executive education initiative

The UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Gilead Sciences this month launched the Gilead-Berkeley Global Health Equity Initiative, a joint program to fight real-world public health issues through private sector–university collaborations. This new program is part of Berkeley Public Health’s renewed emphasis on social impact and real-world solutions.

Gilead has funded the program at $4.5 million for three years, with an option to extend it for another two years. Researchers from Gilead and Berkeley Public Health will aim to address public health problems facing the United States, as well as low- and middle-income countries. They will focus on infectious diseases such as the HIV epidemic; non-communicable illnesses such as cancer, heart diseases and diabetes, and lay the groundwork to fight the next global pandemic.

“We are looking forward to collaboration with Berkeley to identify research questions that are of interest to both Berkeley and Gilead, and to support faculty and students to conduct that research,” said Dr. Anand Chokkalingam, executive director and head of real world evidence virology for the biopharmaceutical giant.

The initiative has three components: collaborations in applied research, involving doctoral students and junior faculty at the Center for Global Health; collaborations in biostatistics and data management under the Center for Targeted Machine Learning and Causal Inference; and executive education.

Gilead’s donation builds on its 2021 gift of $1.4 million, which funded global health training fellowships, collaborative research projects, university–industry co-mentorships, and paid summer internships.

“It was a very successful program,” said Morry Rao Hermón, senior director of corporate and foundation relations. “We supported students who were coming from low- and middle-income countries to get a Master of Public Health (MPH) at UC Berkeley through our online program and residential MPH students from underrepresented backgrounds who were focused on advancing health equity here at home.”

The earlier Gilead program took BPH students on field trips to Gilead’s headquarters in Foster City, CA, for laboratory tours and conversations with researchers.

“One thing we talked about then was the desire to do more collaborative research projects together,” Hermón said. “We wanted to take it to the next level. There are a number of people working at Gilead who are actually our alumni, and that makes it interesting too, since now we will be able to collaborate with them on issues of common concern.”

Deborah Barnett, UC Berkeley Public Health chief of curriculum and instruction, said the executive education component is modeled after the school’s training program for the California Department of Public Health. It will be roughly nine units, equivalent to three graduate courses, focused on using epidemiology and biostatistics in the decision-making process. The main focus will be on real world evidence in health care.

“It’s a great area for us to expand our educational mission,” Barnett said.

Chokkalingam said the certification will increase Gilead employees’ ability to appreciate observational data and use it in their research.

“We’re seeing a much larger use of observational data to derive insights and help drive the direction for the company and for stakeholders outside the company,” he said. “This is a development opportunity for employees, so they can bring additional rigor to their jobs at Gilead.”