• General human resources issues. The general human resources environment in Africa.
• Communities influencing research agendas. How communities can influence health research agendas at local and at national levels to focus on health priorities.
• The power of networks. How ‘networking’ can strengthen health research.
• Communication and Knowledge Sharing for impact. What skills are needed in health research systems and organizations to optimize the use of research communication and knowledge sharing.

The consultation process of the four themes started in early 2006. The partners will take stock of the work in progress at an expert meeting in Nairobi in July. Here, some 60 experts in the thematic areas will meet in Nairobi to review their findings. The meeting is expected to generate new thinking, and plans for future work, programmes and initiatives on the thematic areas. New alliances and professional communities are expected to result from these rich exchanges.

Theme 1 – Health and Research Environment
The environment for health research in Africa presents a host of challenges. Most countries allocate little or no resources for health research while agenda are largely donor driven, often at the expense of national priorities.

This theme looks at what capacity is needed to create research relevant to countries needs, including the identification of existing gaps – by tapping the experiences in case studies; how to transform available evidence into policy formulation and health action; qualities for health research leadership; issues surrounding the health research environment and brain drain.

The expected output of this consultation is new thinking that will inform new strategies for the health research environment in Africa.

Theme 2 - Networking
The purpose of this theme is to understand how networking and networks can strengthen and support health research / researchers / and research systems in low and middle income countries, and what human resource strengthening needs to be done to optimize this. We will examine lessons from networks in and outside the health research sector, both African and global, and consider how networks should become an integral part of health and health research systems.

Examples of how networking and networks can support research for health include: building bridges between established and younger researchers; create an advocacy and communication platform where researchers and communities can meet; provide a substitute for ‘critical mass’ in key research areas in countries where there are few professionals; stimulation of ‘communities of practice’, innovation, and implementation; improve standards, peer review, and transparency; optimize impact of scarce expert resources; creates panels for multi-disciplinary interaction; provides opportunities for varying degrees of engagement in specific activities; build an African (or other) voice in health research.

Communities play an important role in research for health, not just as subjects of this research by outsiders, but as active participants. Community members are used as data collectors and occasionally take part in analysis of formal research. Increasingly the importance of communities driving the research agenda is emphasised, even though actual progress on this is still limited in Africa. Creating links between research systems, research institutions and researchers and communities – including ‘organised civil society’ – is becoming of increasing importance, and has specific human resources requirements.

Awareness exists that development itself has been for thousands of years a cyclical process of research and experimentation, albeit not in the formalised western research definition.

The theme’s approach has been developed in consultations between communications professionals with health research colleagues in the months before the conference. This leads up to a learning session at the HR-HR conference where participants will exchange experiences on three linked approaches that organizations need, to put health research results into action:

• Translating research to increase national health and health equity.
• Creating a two-way dialogue between researchers and policy makers
• Building links and capacity with policy-shapers. These are the intermediaries to policy makers – communities, NGOs and the media.

If research organizations can put such an integrated approach can be put into action at the national level, research producers will go beyond the produce-and-disseminate model. They will create dialogue and feedback loops with their constituents, bringing them into the research cycle – with the research communication strategy as the enabler of this process. Integrating science communication in research in a way that involves the user groups of research takes a big step toward helping health researchers appreciate the areas where their skills will be most useful to society. Implications for HR implications for training and mentoring requirements & strategies which enhances the communication interaction needed between researchers, policy makers, communities and other research users.