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Texas Children's Global Health Childhood Tuberculosis (TB) Program
What if we could provide every child living with HIV and their family an opportunity to lead a healthy and fulfilled life?
WE CAN
Give to Global TB
Thank you for supporting the Global Childhood Tuberculosis program at Texas Children's Hospital. Your gift helps us develop and provide life-saving diagnostics and treatment to improve the lives of individuals suffering from TB.
Our Mission
The Texas Children’s Global Childhood TB program mission is to advance evidence based programming that effectively prevents, finds, cures, and ultimately eliminates tuberculosis.
To advance our mission, our team works in four inter-related areas including disease prevention, diagnostics, treatment, and immunology. These program domains are built upon a data collection core and complemented by rigorous epidemiological and operational research.
A critical step towards achieving our goals is the establishment of a network of Tuberculosis Centers of Excellence built upon Texas Children’s Global Health existing clinical infrastructure.
The fulcrum of the Global TB Program is based in Mbabane, Eswatini. In 2015, the Texas Children’s Hospital Global TB Centre of Excellence opened as a clinical and laboratory facility to serve as a national referral center for pediatric TB and host a broad range of translational research projects at the Baylor Foundation-Eswatini Clinical Centre of Excellence. The facility has been specifically designed to support cutting edge research that will elucidate the pathophysiology of HIV-TB co-infection and inform the development of future preventive and treatment interventions.
The Challenge
TB is the leading infectious disease killer in the world. Every year, TB causes disease and suffering in 10 million people and claims the lives of 1.5 million. Despite the discovery of effective treatment, TB remains one of the most dangerous infectious diseases in our world and relentlessly targets our most vulnerable populations .
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Children and adolescents in all communities, and people combatting HIV, malnutrition, and poverty are disproportionately affected by TB due to inadequate preventive services, poor diagnostic tests, large case detection gaps, limited access to TB care, treatment adherence challenges, and the existence of suffocating stigma.
Our Approach
The Global TB Program embraces a collaborative approach to achieve sustainable impact.
We leverage partnerships with Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine and experts at leading institutions around the globe to generate evidence to advance the care and treatment of children and families combatting TB.
We collectively develop effective, sustainable, standardized methods of diagnosing tuberculosis in children and adolescents while identifying biomarkers correlating with progression from tuberculosis infection to disease, as well as standardizing screening processes to better characterize epidemiological risk factors for tuberculosis.
The Global TB Program partners with the World Health Organization to perform expert reviews of child TB screening and diagnostic tools and regularly serves as experts on guideline development groups to inform policy regarding the care and treatment of children and adolescents combatting tuberculosis in all countries.
Case Detection
We work on novel programmatic strategies to increase TB case finding through community outreach.
Diagnosis
We are addressing challenges with obtaining child TB diagnostic specimens by improving diagnostics in easily obtained specimen types such as stool as well as evaluating existing approaches to diagnosing TB disease and infection in children.
Treatment
We are frequently called on to report on best practices for TB treatment in children and children living with HIV.
Translational Immunology
Tuberculosis is the archetypical chronic infection that inhibits host immunity. Epigenetic mediated immune exhaustion is one means of TB induced long-lasting immune inhibition.
World Health Organization Reviews
We have partnered with colleagues on reviews that inform World Health Organization child TB diagnostic and screening guidelines in children.
Where We Work
With support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, U.S. Department of Defense, European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership, U.S. National Institutes of Health, StopTB, TB Reach, and Thrasher Research Fund, we have an extensive funding portfolio that covers both research and programmatic activities in nine countries around the world.
ESWATINI
Regional headquarters; Delivering TB clinical care, training and education, and robust research leader – providing regional TB expertise across the TCH Global Health Network
LESOTHO, MALAWI, MOZAMBIQUE, TANZANIA & UGANDA
Partner sites conducting diagnostic research studies for pediatric and young adult clinical care advancement
COLOMBIA
Serving as technical support for TB and coinfections (e.g., malnutrition)
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Clinical care providers and national TB training leaders
PHILIPPINES
Community-based initiative to improve child TB case finding and narrow the case detection gap
View our Recent Scholarly Activity
Leadership & Partnerships
Leadership
Anna Maria Mandalakas, MD, MSEpi, PhD
Director, Texas Children’s Global TB Program
Professor, Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine
Alexander Kay, MD
Associate Director, Texas Children’s Global TB Program
Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine
Andrew DiNardo, MD
Director of Translational Research, Texas Children’s Global TB Program
Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine
Tara Devezin, MID
Program Manager, Texas Children’s Global TB Program
Patricia Dorman
Senior Administrative Coordinator, Texas Children’s Global TB Program
Beto Mendez-Reyes, MD, MA
Biostatistician, Texas Children’s Global TB Program
Partnerships
- Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development
- U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
- U.S. Department of Defense
- U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade
- ExxonMobil Papua New Guinea
- Eswatini National TB Control Programme
- Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
- Manhiça Health Research Centre, Radboud University
- U.S. National Institutes of Health – National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Disease
- Tanzania National Institute for Medical Research – Mbeya Medical Research Centre
- Research Centre Borstel
- Tulane University
- University of Ottowa
Featured Stories
Fighting to close the GAP on global pediatric TB care
Building upon the energy of Global TB Program staff members and with nearly a decade of robust TB experience and innovation, the Global TB Program was most recently awarded a five-year, $5 million Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant that will operate from September 2020 through September 2025. This five year project, “Closing – TB GAPS – for people living with HIV: TB Guidance for Adaptable Patient-centered Services” (TB GAPS), will focus on finding and preventing TB in children and youth, while simultaneously determining the most cost-effective prevention strategy and promoting best practices to sustain the impact of our work.
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