Complex global problems require complex global solutions. They also necessitate collaboration, coordination, trials and funding. For faculty interested in approaching a global public health crisis from a new perspective, this means managing a whole host of factors across thousands of miles and international borders.
Since 2022, The Susan and Richard Kiphart Center for Global Health and Social Development has sought social solutions to public health’s biggest global challenges. The center leads educational programs for undergraduate and graduate students, engages in community outreach and funds faculty research projects that promote global health equity, particularly in lower- and middle-income countries.
Administered jointly between the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and the Biological Sciences Division, the Kiphart Center supports innovative projects by funding annual faculty research grants that put theoretical ideas into action.
Alan Zarychta, faculty director of the Kiphart Center since July 2025, believes the center is unique not only for its programming, but also for its cross-disciplinary collaboration.
“Kiphart has a real comparative advantage being at the University of Chicago, situated within this intellectual community,” Zarychta said. “There is a culture here of really just focusing on problems, on questions and pursuing whatever knowledge can be gathered to answer them.”
Seeding solutions
The Kiphart Center’s Fund for Research and Innovation in Global Health and Social Development research grants facilitate faculty research all over the world, including Tanzania, China and Uruguay. Each cycle, five to 10 projects ranging from behavioral social studies to ecology and beyond, are awarded up to $50,000. Though this amount isn’t always enough to support large-scale implementation, it is often enough to collect the initial data necessary to propel a study forward.
“We are trying to be a catalyst to help faculty do the work that they're already interested in doing,” Zarychta said.
Where other funding mechanisms value strictly disciplinary approaches, the Kiphart Center seeks imaginative proposals, since public health crises require out-of-the-box thinking.
“We want to encourage people to have multiple viewpoints, from the start of a project through its execution,” Zarychta said.
This approach is facilitated by a faculty advisory committee composed of faculty from a range of departments, including the Crown Family School and the Biological Sciences Division but also the Social Science Division, the Harris School of Public Policy and more. Erick Amick, who has been the executive director of the Kiphart Center since its inception, finds this board drives the grant program in selecting exciting and innovative projects.
“Because we’re an interdisciplinary center, we’re not driven exclusively by a single line of research,” he explained. “That enables us to see what's out there and be bold in selecting innovative projects to address complex issues.”
The faculty committee has also served over the years to ensure that while creative approaches are emphasized, the driving force behind the work is not lost.
“Our focus is the social determinants of health for vulnerable populations and communities around the world, so we can take a very expansive approach,” he said. “Having brought a truly interdisciplinary group of folks together to get ideas and think through challenges that we might encounter, we spend a lot of time speaking with the committee about setting priorities for the kinds of research that we want to fund because we get a broad range of proposals each application cycle.”
In 2023, Leyla Ismayilova, an associate professor in the Crown Family School, received a Kiphart Center research grant to fund pilot-testing for a program in Azerbaijan centered around economic interventions for youth as a means to reduce vulnerability to a range of adolescent risk behaviors, including school disengagement, delinquency, unsafe peer influences and substance use, and to promote positive financial and social habits.
Over her time at UChicago, Ismayilova has been involved in a range of global programs that provide support for faculty. Though there have historically been a variety of certificate programs that focus on global social development, the formation of the Kiphart Center formally established a hub of research and collaboration that faculty interested in global health can reach to.
For Ismayilova, whose larger studies are often funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Kiphart Center grant helped to fund initial testing that would be used to apply for other grants.
“Many studies require pilot data and that's the part that I think is not always easy to get,” she said. “That's where I think Kiphart’s seed grant program comes very much in handy.”
Ismayilova’s project took her to Azerbaijan where she collaborated with Aflatoun International, Bank Respublika and local community-based organizations to adapt an existing model premised on youth savings accounts that incentivize families to save toward education, housing or small business development. The intervention addresses challenges common to many low-resource communities across low- and middle-income countries, where adolescents from families facing economic insecurity often have limited educational and employment opportunities—circumstances that may increase young people’s risk of negative outcomes.
The adapted Aflatoun International curriculum introduced a 12-session social and financial skills course designed to build practical money-management skills while instilling new ideas about entrepreneurship, social responsibility, career pathways and future possibilities for youth.
This educational programming integrated with direct economic intervention not only begins the process of building strong entrepreneurial skills and saving habits for the participants, but also provides them with tangible resources that can be cashed out in the future as adolescents transition into adulthood. This could pay for vocational training, to purchase equipment or pursue other pathways toward economic independence.
Ismayilova is also investigating the impacts of the intervention on the children’s emotional wellbeing, recognizing the strain that family’s financial instability puts on even the youngest members of communities. Many of the children in the trial come from high-risk family backgrounds that expose them to stress, instability and exposure to risky environments, which can further compound the risk of problem behaviors, including substance use.
“Adolescents who are at risk of kind of behavioral problems often for financial reasons, cannot find their way of being integrated in the society and therefore can be at risk for substance use and other kinds of risky behaviors,” she explained. “This program introduces concepts of financial literacy from an early age, but it also focuses on emotional and social skills that are very important in the context of money so that they can be mentally prepared to face these kinds of issues.”
By adapting existing curriculum centered around building financial toolkits for youth, Ismayilova is hoping to find the best suited programming that uplifts youth to dream beyond their current situations. Ismayilova, along with her collaborators, hopes that such interventions will be adaptable to a host of global situations and be able to support youth as they progress through school and think about what's next.
“These adolescents often don't see any other opportunities for growth and development, so they don't see many options for their futures,” she explained. “Through this program, they have a chance to see that alternatives are available, even for them, and that you don't always need to get a university degree in order to have a successful or have manageable life.”
Working with 30 participants over a one-year period across two cities, Ismayilova also examined the effects of an urban and semi-urban setting on the efficacy of the program with the goal of figuring out how to best adapt the curriculum to each situation. With the research grant, Ismayilova was also able to host training sessions with teachers and school psychologists from 11 schools across Azerbaijan led by trainers from the Netherlands and the Teachers Academy Foundation in Turkey.
In line with the Kiphart Center’s mission, Ismayilova’s project seeks to test adaptable social solutions to global public health and social development challenges by creating pathways to opportunity, strengthening future aspirations and fostering hope among youth from low-resource families and communities—factors that may help improve long-term health trajectories and reduce vulnerability to behavioral risks.
Having completed the necessary pilot-testing and data collection of the program with the funds from the Kiphart Center faculty research grant, Isamyilova is now working on a larger-scale application of the program. This will test how support for savings accounts for younger children can build strong foundations for learning, developmental outcomes, future aspirations and longer-term psychosocial well-being.
As the Kiphart Center moves into its fifth year, they are looking forward to finding new ways to spark conversations around global health and social development, whether it be through new study abroad programs for students, symposia for researchers to present their findings or continuing outward-facing programming such as World Health Day.
“We have these complex challenges that cross health and social development in lower- and middle-income countries, and in a lot of cases, it's difficult to think about addressing them from a single disciplinary perspective,” Zarychta said. “The Kiphart Center is really an effort to bring biomedical, public health and social science perspectives together to help improve health and well-being in communities around the world.”
