Kasiisi Project Healthy Children: Healthy Chimps Research Program Wins Award

Bossart Scholarship Award winner Taylor Weary training Ugandan colleagues on collecting nasal swabs

The importance of The Kasiisi Project One Health initiative, Healthy Children: Healthy Chimps, has been recognized by the choice of Taylor Weary as the inaugural recipient of the Gregory D Bossart Memorial One Health Scholarship. Taylor, a PhD, DMV student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, received the scholarship for    research focused on the interconnection between animals, people, plants, and their shared environment. in partnership with Ugandan colleagues this ground breaking research tracks transmission of potentially lethal respiratory viruses from children to chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda, Taylor is responsible for laboratory analyses of clinical specimens collected from people and chimpanzees around the park.

Ugandan health workers practice collecting nasal swabs.

Funded by the Arcus Foundation and the National Geographic Society, Healthy Children: Healthy Chimps is a collaborative project combining the skills and resources of   the Kasiisi Project, The Kibale EcoHealth Project and the Kibale Chimpanzee Project aimed at  clarifying transmission pathways of viruses of human origin that  infect and kill great apes. In 2022 the project will be extended to two other chimpanzee and one mountain gorilla research site in Uganda

Nasal swabs and medical history being collected from primary aged children