The Milken Institute School of Public Health received a $1.25 million grant to launch a bioethics training program in Mali, Africa, according to a public health school release Monday.

The National Institutes of Health is funding the five-year United States-Mali Research Ethics Training Program, which aims to promote ethical research in areas like genomics and infectious and emerging diseases, the release states. Adnan Hyder, the public health school’s senior associate dean for research and the project’s principal investigator, said factors like the Ebola outbreak and recent genomics research have contributed to an upsurge in public health and clinical research in West Africa, heightening the need for ethics education.

“The goal of our training program is to strengthen research ethics education and research in Mali,” Hyder said in the release. “Our innovative model will prepare researchers in West Africa today and will train the next generation of ethics leaders to take on the challenges of the future.”

The public health school will join forces with the University of Sciences, Techniques & Technologies Bamako in Mali to carry out the project, according to the release. The partnership will offer students research ethics courses and mentoring, develop a research ethics specialization within USTTB’s existing public health master’s program and create a research ethics unit at USTTB, the release states.

“We hope the project will result in better awareness of ethical conduct in public health and clinical research,” Paul Ndebele, a research regulatory specialist for the public health school and a co-principal investigator, said in the release.