People of AMPATH: Michael Scanlon, Assistant Director of Research
Michael Scanlon, MPH, joined AMPATH in September as the assistant director of research, but his involvement with AMPATH goes back for almost a decade.
How did you first learn about AMPATH?
Michael Scanlon, MPH
In 2011, I attended a talk by Dr. Rachel Vreeman about her pediatric HIV research projects in Kenya, and I knew I wanted to get involved. I began working for Dr. Vreeman as a research assistant at Indiana University and I moved to Eldoret in 2012 to manage her research projects. I left Eldoret in 2015 to begin my PhD. I returned to Kenya full-time in 2019 on a Fulbright Student Research Award and Fogarty Global Health Fellowship to support my doctoral research on labor relations and strikes in the Kenyan public health sector. Due to COVID-19, my Fulbright and Fogarty fellowships were cut short and I returned to the U.S. in March 2020 and was a Global Health Fellow with the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
What makes AMPATH unique?
People at AMPATH dream big and are eager to take on new challenges while staying grounded to AMPATH’s core values of partnership and leading with care. I think that our commitment to these values across care, education, and research are a big part of what makes AMPATH unique. It is an exciting time to be rejoining AMPATH. Whether it is confronting the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, working with county governments in Kenya on new models of care for population health, or thinking about how to replicate the success of the AMPATH partnership in other countries, there is never a shortage of new challenges to tackle.
What aspects of global health research are most interesting to you?
AMPATH Pediatric HIV Research team at a team retreat on Lake Victoria
I love the opportunity to play some small part in research that can improve people’s lives. While the translation of research into practice and policy can be slow, in my experience research is most likely to have an impact when it is collaborative, interdisciplinary, and driven by clinical and community priorities. This is the kind of research I have been fortunate to be part of at AMPATH and that I am excited to support in my new role. In addition, the larger global health community is in a moment of collective critical reflection about issues of equity in global health research programs and partnerships. I think wrestling with these types of questions is at the core of a lot of what AMPATH does, and I look forward to continuing these challenging conversations with colleagues at AMPATH as well as sharing our experiences and what we’ve learned along the way with others.
What goals do you have for the AMPATH research program?
The AMPATH Research Program represents such a unique model for collaborative global health research. We tend to think of research dollars and publications as measures of success, and of course these are important metrics. But when I think about the success of the AMPATH Research Program, I more often think of success in terms of the countless teams of talented coordinators, data managers, and research assistants implementing complex study protocols; the strong relationships developed with community and government partners and clinical care systems; and the research, grants, and laboratory staff and infrastructure that all of these research projects rely on to be successful. So, I think the most important goals I have for the AMPATH Research Program are to support these incredible research staffs and teams and to identify ways to continually strengthen the “nuts and bolts” that provide a platform for world-class research. A specific initiative I am particularly excited about pushing forward is increasing the research program’s collaboration with AMPATH’s population health initiative. I think there are important opportunities for research to inform and test different care models for population health in western Kenya.
AMPATH Pediatric HIV Research team at Kerio View