UNMC has reaffirmed a nearly decade-long collaboration with its health security counterparts in Japan, signing a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Japan Institute for Health Security.
In a signing ceremony June 3 at the Aita Balcony overlooking the Wigton Heritage Center, UNMC Interim Chancellor H. Dele Davies, MD, joined with Norio Ohmagari, MD, PhD, director of the Department of Infectious Disease Clinical Policy, Bureau of Health Security and Management, for the Japan Institute for Health Security, to formalize the agreement.
The new memorandum expands UNMC’s partnership across the Pacific, both through the med center’s own involvement and with the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center. It also expands the partnership to Japan’s new health security agency, which has undergone a merger and taken on a new name.
A number of the med center’s experts and leaders from the Global Center for Health Security attended the signing ceremony, along with a delegation of Japan’s own infectious disease and health security experts, Dr. Ohmagari, Yukimasa Matsuzawa, MD, PhD, and Hiromi Hibino, MD.
Dr. Davies said the event represented a celebration of the trust, vision and commitment that has grown between the partner institutions – UNMC, the Global Center for Health Security and the Japan Institute for Health Security.
He told attendees at the ceremony that the partnership has thrived through mutual exchange and shared purpose.
“In a world increasingly shaped by emerging threats to public health,” Dr. Davies said, “this partnership stands as a model of what international collaboration must look like: proactive, strategic and sustained.”
The partnership traces back to 2016, when Japan sent a delegation to visit UNMC to learn more about the med center’s response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak of 2014. The partners have since jointly participated in international health forums, discussed clinical research networks and been involved in training exercises.
Japan has even modeled its high-level infectious diseases isolation unit after the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
A delegation from Japan also visited UNMC in 2022, which was followed up in 2023 by a group of UNMC health security experts visiting Tokyo and the National Center for Global Health and Medicine.
Just last month, a team from the UNMC Department of Emergency Medicine traveled to Tokyo to attend the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine Congress.
Dr. Ohmagari said Japan has learned much from UNMC’s preparedness planning for infectious diseases, offering tremendous insight that has helped build Japan’s own capacity.
“We’re really counting on UNMC to work with us, together, and we can cultivate much more of a relationship,” he said. “And we can also undergo many more activities with UNMC to make the world safer.”
Congratulations to our UNMC team for this landmark MOU! Global health is more important than ever and it’s great to see this partnership with Japan grow from emergency medicine to infectious disease.