UCSF’s partnership with Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) began in 2005. At the time, MUHAS was planning to become a university of health sciences – with a vision to educate Tanzania’s health professionals to serve the health needs of their people. UCSF was setting up Global Health Sciences to support its vision of educating health professionals and scientists to advance health in the United States and worldwide. We agreed that, through partnership, we could transition both our institutions to contribute to global health, and address the acute shortage of health professionals in Africa.

The institutional partnership between MUHAS and UCSF is reciprocal at its core. It differs from more traditional project- or department-based academic partnerships in that it is based on the hypothesis that it is more cost-effective to build institution-wide capacity. While the primary goal is to support MUHAS to expand its capacity to supply the health professionals that Tanzania so urgently requires, the partnership also strengthens UCSF’s capacity to contribute to global health and the global workforce crisis.