Sustaining Technical and Analytic Resources (STAR)

STAR provides participants with immersive job placements in USAID Missions and global health organizations with support services designed to build their capacity and contribute technical expertise to address high-impact needs. STAR Fellows and Interns participate in customized learning activities to enhance knowledge and skills, and support career development. STAR is working with Ministries of Health, private companies, NGOs, and academic institutions to meet complex global health challenges.

STAR is improving critical care, especially related to patient oxygen supply and ecosystems, in LMICs. STAR is engaging with UCSF, and their strong relationship with the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (WFSA), to access technical experts who can provide advice, create tools for assessment, knowledge sharing, and education, and implement technical assistance in these important aspects of countries’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through UCSF-WFSA, STAR is also developing critical care mentorship platforms and communication/education portals to be utilized by WFSA and in-country implementing partners in countries to support local critical care teams responding to the pandemic.

The Sustaining Technical and Analytic Resources (STAR) project aims to better understand how to create and sustain respectful, mutually beneficial partnerships that will strengthen global health practice. One element of this work involves pairing academic institutions in order to develop, test, and codify best practices for successful, sustainable partnerships. STAR’s strategic approach to studying these partnerships is called the Collaboration Laboratory. STAR launched its Collaboration Laboratory in September 2019, pairing eight academic institutions from the US, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Nepal, and Bolivia.