Thayer Award

Dr. Yeh also is a professor in the UNMC Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and director of Retina and Uveitis Service for Nebraska Medicine, UNMC's primary clinical partner.

Dr. Yeh's proposed project seeks to develop and strengthen a comprehensive global ophthalmic engagement program focused on training initiatives for health care providers outside the U.S. and within UNMC in global health, extending our impact from Nebraska to countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Dr. Yeh’s long-term goal is to develop a hybrid curriculum that combines both virtual webinars with in-person training that would bring UNMC ophthalmology expertise to three countries where we have existing partnerships or ongoing field work – Honduras, Nepal and Sierra Leone.

Each country is unique in their level of ophthalmic infrastructure and capacity and ongoing training needs. As such, the settings provide unique training experiences for participatory learning by UNMC faculty, residents and medical students where health care providers could be actively engaged and contribute meaningfully, while also bringing UNMC expertise to resource-limited settings in low and middle-income countries.

Given the strength of partnerships in LMICs within Africa, Asia and Latin America, the development of a program “From Nebraska to the World” will provide an unmatched and unique opportunity for bidirectional knowledge exchange, raising awareness of avoidable blindness and practical tools for the reduction of the burden of vision loss and blindness.

In the same way that prior learners from UNMC have traveled with their team to Sierra Leone and other low- and middle-income countries, the specific opportunities in the D.J. and Janet Thayer Family Global Engagement Award will also train future leaders including medical students, residents and faculty in global health through education, research and service, within the context of sight-saving vision health programs.