Ethiopia Partnership

A decade-long national effort

Emory School of Nursing is a founding partner in a decade-long initiative dedicated to improving maternal-infant health in Ethiopia. Headquartered in the capital city of Addis Ababa, Emory University Ethiopia is bringing together partners and stakeholders (families, communities, government orgs, health facilities, and others) from across Ethiopia and around the globe.

Started in 2010 by Dr. Lynn Sibley, with support from a $5 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant, the school’s work has consistently involved projects that:

• Are locally led (with collaborative input from people at many levels)
• Involve simple, low- or no-cost interventions
• Can be implemented by patients, families, and frontline health workers
• May be readily adapted to different locations
• Are based on extensive scientific evidence

Answering a pressing need

The protection of mothers and babies is one of Ethiopia’s most urgent healthcare priorities. Women in Ethiopia have a 1 in 52 chance of dying from childbirth-related complications, and more than 120,000 infants die during the neonatal period (the first 28 days of life) every year, according to USAID. These facts underscore the critical importance of Emory-Ethiopia’s maternal-infant health work. School of Nursing faculty and students, and their counterparts at the Country Office, are partnering with communities to implement measures such as:

• KMC (formerly called Kangaroo Mother Care): KMC is the simple act of holding an infant in constant skin-to-skin contact during the first days of life. While it typically involves exclusive breastfeeding, any parent or guardian can provide KMC (not just new moms). This practice—which is backed by more than 35 years of research—has been shown to be at least as effective as an ICU incubator in improving survival for low-birth-weight infants.
  • Faculty and students are helping to scale up KMC in the Amhara region of Ethiopia (as part of a larger consortium targeting four regions in Ethiopia and two in India). Their aim is to reach a population area of 1,126,093. They also aim to ensure that any mothers with babies who need KMC are able to learn about it and practice it effectively—with a benchmark that at least 80% of eligible infants receive KMC within the studied time period.
• Global Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP): This project, implemented in partnership with UNICEF, mobilizes thousands across Ethiopia to act upon one shared belief - every newborn deserves the highest possible standard of care.
  • In order to spread best practice awareness and streamline referrals for at-risk infants, researchers have developed a groundbreaking information sharing network. This network involves creative communication mechanisms, such as “cascade” training. With cascade training, health professionals take classes on how to effectively train others in quality care; they then teach health extension workers, who in turn share knowledge with communities, and so on.
  • So far, 75 health professionals have trained 320 health extension workers, who have shared lifesaving information with 2,240 community team members (and counting). Together, they are identifying at-risk infants sooner and referring them for appropriate care faster than ever before, even in the hardest-to-reach places.

School faculty are also helping to counteract severe bloodstream infections, or sepsis, in newborns (which remains a leading cause of death in children under five). Teams from the nursing school are involved in several major studies on sepsis treatment and prevention. These studies include community and facility settings and span the spectrum of care.

Funding for the Emory-Ethiopia Country Office has been provided by School of Nursing and international donor organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Rejecting Borders, Rejecting Boundaries

The innovative Emory-AAU PhD in Nursing Program is the first nursing PhD program in Ethiopia and the only one of its kind in Africa. It’s offered in collaboration between Emory School of Nursing and Addis Ababa University (AAU) and involves a hybrid in-person and distance-learning approach. Students attend some courses at AAU and use advanced technologies, like an interactive smart classroom, to participate in School of Nursing courses in real-time, alongside students.

AAU students receive continuous academic and professional support from a dedicated School of Nursing faculty mentor throughout the program. Mentors are paired with students using a careful matching system; this system is designed to ensure that students’ research interests align with mentor expertise and may one day impact both Ethiopian and US health outcomes.

Mentors and mentees meet regularly, including at an intensive four-week writing immersion experience, which takes place on Emory campus in Atlanta, Ga, during the summer of their second or third year. The intensive is an opportunity for students to:

• Work face-to-face with their Emory mentors
• Write and defend their dissertation proposal
• Complete professional development activities, such as informational interviews and networking

They’re encouraged to formally discuss post-graduation plans, such as post-doctoral fellowships or faculty opportunities, at this point.

In addition to training a cadre of highly qualified nurse scientists, the Emory-AAU PhD in Nursing Program was designed to prepare students who may one day:

• Advance Ethiopian health system reform
• Play lead roles in ensuring universal healthcare for all Ethiopians
• Mentor the next generation of nurse scientists

In fact, the program model assumes that some students will eventually join AAU’s doctorate-prepared faculty and teach future PhDs, a key aim being that AAU will one day sustain the program without Emory support. The first Emory-AAU graduate, Dr. Fekadu Aga, is now Program Coordinator at AAU.

Furthermore, two of the enrolled students are actively involved in national nursing reform efforts. These students are helping to organize a team of nurses who are collaborating with a national task force on healthcare regulation. The task force is designed to ensure that healthcare professionals, including nurses, are trained with an approved curriculum, pass a national qualifying exam, become licensed, and continue professional development once they are in the workforce.

The School of Nursing is leveraging its international network to connect the Ethiopian regulatory taskforce with Kenyan nurse leaders. That includes the Registrar of Kenya’s Nursing Council and a former national Chief Nursing Officer through a “South-to-South” collaboration. That is, Kenya—a country with a strong health workforce regulatory system—is sharing its successes, experience, knowledge, and materials with Ethiopia to help fast-track the formation of Ethiopian regulatory councils.