Earlier this month,

In particular, we at COHRED were pleased to see that in the conference statement, the importance of strengthening national research for health systems was highlighted as a key issue. At the very heart of COHRED’s mission is the conviction that all countries, no matter how poor, should invest in establishing and strengthening sustainable systems for research for health. This is by no means a new message – it is a message from our origins, first affirmed in the landmark report of the Commission on Health Research and Development. It is important to highlight that we mean ‘research for health’ and ‘research for health systems’. We advocate systems that strengthen a country’s ability to conduct any research – environmental, agricultural, water sanitation – which also protects and promotes the health of the public.

Having a strong system for research for health helps to ensure that it is countries – rather than external influencers – that are in the driver’s seat when determining the priorities for research for health. In addition, it is clear that research and innovation are critical drivers of development and that the strengthening of national research capacity not only provides both an effective and practical course of action to maximise health outcomes, but also to achieve broader technical and socio-economic development.

COHRED maintains an active portfolio of work in this area. We are currently working with The New Partnership for Africa’s Development Agency (NEPAD) towards strengthening national capacity to govern research and innovation in African countries. This programme, Research for Health Africa (R4HA), focuses on the implementation of practical tools and methods for Governments and institutions to use in research. It also allows for the sharing of best practice through a co-operative platform. Working initially with three African countries: Tanzania, Senegal, and Mozambique – the goal of R4HA is to build strong governance systems for managing research for health. The programme aims to go beyond the three countries to set the regional stage for the exchange of expertise on strengthening governance of research and innovation.

We continue to actively work within Latin American countries and we recently convened the successful 2^nd Latin American Conference on Research and Innovation for Health. We are building closer relationships with the Arab countries – and are in the planning stages of convening a think tank in Bellagio to harness the opportunity of the Arab Spring to promote research and innovation for health in the Arab world. We continue to actively contribute to the research dialogue in this area, most recently reflecting on how it is that health research systems emerge.

The focus of the Irish Forum’s conference was on human resources for health – acknowledging that the critical shortage of health workers is one of the greatest global challenges facing us today. We agree with the scale and the importance of this challenge: and it is clear to us that here too, strong research for health systems in-country are a central part of the solution. It is through research in countries and the application of the research results that effective, country-specific solutions can be elaborated and applied. In the case of health workers, it is through achieving a better understanding of the training needs and the incentives to stay (or to go), and the possibilities for innovative solutions – that health worker shortages can begin to be addressed.

We are pleased therefore, to welcome the Irish Forum for Global Health to Forum 2012, where they have exciting plans to convene a session aimed at further developing and operationalising some of the key messages from their conference.

Best wishes,

Carel.

You can also follow Carel on Twitter via @CarelsNews where he tweets in his personal capacity.

The article was written by Maarten O Kok, Amabelia Rodrigues, Augusto Paulo Silva and COHRED’s very own Sylvia de Haan (in photo).  In the article, the authors argue that little is known about how health research systems (HRS) in low-income countries emerge and evolve over time, and how this process relates to their performance. They insist that understanding how HRSs emerge is important for the development of well functioning National Health Research Systems (NHRS). And so, the aim of their study was to assess how the HRS in Guinea Bissau has emerged and evolved over time and how the present system functions.

For more on the study, go to:

Abstract

http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/10/1/5/abstract

Provisional PDF

http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/pdf/1478-4505-10-5.pdf

For help or more information, contact either info@biomedcentral.com and/or cohred@cohred.org

At the COHRED Group Forum in April this year, the ‘International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD)’ which was launched through an initiative that studied successful models of innovative healthcare delivery from around the world, will host an interactive session on the work the organization is doing to identify, better understand and support the scaling and replication of successful models of innovation in healthcare delivery.

Everyone attending the conference in Cape Town is aware of the challenges facing health systems around the world. The rising cost of healthcare and the pressure on providing better access and quality is not just one faced by leaders in healthcare but has become an economic issue facing countries around the world. Healthcare has been growing on average at two percentage points above GDP growth in OECD countries for the last 60 years; in the US the figure is 2.5 percentage points. The sector has become one of the largest in the world and is between $6-7 trillion annually; in the US, healthcare represents 18% of GDP.

Through the World Economic Forum initiative, examples of innovation in healthcare delivery were identified where affordable access to quality care was being achieved that was being seen to be transformative in its local setting. For example, CFW Shops (Health Stores Foundation and One Family Health) in Kenya and Rwanda is able to deliver basic care for 70% of illness and 40% of the deaths in local communities. It has done this through using nurses as franchisees to run small clinics and health posts. This is both empowering the women involved as well as providing a quality healthcare service to their community.

The real challenge therefore is how to achieve scale with the solutions that are already seen to be working and the role that they play within health systems around the world; what role can innovation, typically seen in the private sector (both for-profit and non-profit), be better fostered in order to drive change in health systems and ultimately help unlock the iron-triangle of cost, access and quality.

During the sessions in Cape Town; the IPIHD will talk about the need and purpose of the work and approach that they’re taking. Healthcare innovators, including One Family Health, will talk about how they’re driving change in health systems they’re working with and how they’re able to complement the current provision to move towards better outcomes and results. The session will focus on what some of the policy changes are required in order to enable the creation of a greater role for innovation in healthcare delivery and what some of the steps required are to make this happen.

* Associate Director, 
International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery

The recipients for the Awards under the Research category include:

•  José Villar Mendiara, from Argentina, is considered by the Latin American scientific community as a model of excellence in clinical and public health research and also in the formation of human resources for maternal and neonatal care;

•  Julio Sotelo Morales, from México, whose medical research work has positioned him as one of the most internationally, cited authors from Latin America on neurocysticercosis.

The recipients for the Awards under the Exceptional Institution category include:

•  Fundación Canguro, from Colombia, an NGO that has come up with an innovative and easy to adopt model on how to care for newborn babies. This has introduced a key factor of consideration in reducing neonatal deaths in developing countries.

For more on this, go to: http://www.salud.carlosslim.org/Paginas/home.aspx

The Forum is focused on the theme: ‘Beyond aid…research and innovation as key drivers for health, equity and development’. The three-day engagement, which runs from the 24^th to the 26^th of April 2012, will convene in South Africa’s mother city of Cape Town. It is organised by the COHRED Group, in collaboration with the country’s Department of Science and Technology.

Click here to listen to the interview

Source:  http://www.channelafrica.co.za/portal/site/ChannelAfrica/

“Other notable efforts to enhance accountability and access to information about human subjects research are also underway. For example, “Health Research Web,” initiated by the Council on Health Research for Development, an international nongovernmental organization whose primary objective is to strengthen research for health and innovation, compiles information on studies taking place around the world, as well as information about IRBs and research ethics committees, countries’ governance policies, and other useful data.”

Ms Boitumelo Mokgatla-Moipolai is the senior research officer on the research ethics component of Health Research Web, and Prof Carel IJsselmuiden, Director of COHRED and adjunct professor at UKZN is the PI, with Prof Doug Wassenaar as the UKZN Co-PI. The project has also attracted major interest and engagement from Latin American countries that have logged over 1000 RECs on the system to date. Pfizer has also funded the parallel capturing of all Drug Regulatory Authorities on the system which will eventually provide a single up-to-date resource on all African ethics research and regulatory systems to facilitate the ethical conduct of health research in Africa.

The project website can be viewed at http://www.researchethicsweb.org/ and the US Presidential Commission Report can be accessed at http://bioethics.gov/cms/node/559

The Forum will examine the prospects for a new vision of development that looks ‘beyond aid’, by focusing on developing capacities in low-and middle-income countries and emerging economies. In doing this, the Forum will also investigate how:

• research can be used to create relevant and applicable knowledge
• technology can be used to transform knowledge into practical solutions and
• how innovations can be used for the scaling up of initiatives and processes that can enhance health, equity and development.

For the above to happen, the Forum will bring together more than 300 participants from research institutions, business, social enterprises, civil society organisations, governments, international organisations, funders and media. The Forum will bring together the world’s change makers – from the South and the North – thereby creating an avenue through which they can develop equal partnerships toward effecting positive change for global health.

The annual Forum meetings have been important in raising awareness on the importance of research in informing policy decision-making and programme implementation in the health sector. They have also been crucial in drawing the attention and support of politicians towards key emerging and previously neglected issues.

We are aware of the health research related problems that many people in the world are grappling with, and these problems constitute an impediment to socio-economic development. The information that comes out of our Forum meetings has helped us to identify some of the equity gaps in the provision of basic services.

As some of you might be aware, many of the problems that impact on health have their origins in sectors other than health. This is the main point of the rationale behind the consensus consolidated in Bamako (Mali) in 2008, to agree on the designation ‘Research for Health’ within a context that promotes inputs from different sectors. Now, we need to go further, and move towards the establishment of collaborative mechanisms between research institutions in the health sector with those from other sectors. Finding solutions for the problems is everyone’s task. The new series of meetings which will start with the Forum 2012 will help in driving the message home – and eventually contribute towards improved coordination between the various constituents at the national, regional and global levels.

Forum 2012 will take on a new approach to the Forum meetings – in as far as it will act as a platform for the participants to exchange ideas engage on evidence from their research and come up with solutions to problems in a dynamic and interactive way. In line with the Forum theme, the focus will be on how to build from the evidence and capitalise on the recent advances in technology as an avenue for generating innovative solutions that are effective and sustainable.

As part of a process of including a multiplicity and diversity of voices in the Forum we are working to see that we have participants from different constituencies, so that we can have in one room a combination of experiences and skills to facilitate the Forum process. We believe that this is the way forward – in forming partnerships that can harness the best out of different groups in order to bring about change. Change that is driven by home-grown needs and solutions that are then adapted to the local context.

“Beyond Aid” is the overarching message for Forum 2012 – the idea is to focus on the country processes, particularly the institutional capacity building and the quality of human resources that can act as building blocks towards a development approach that looks at aid and beyond.

Aid is important and necessary, but to really be effective, it has to act as a lever that helps countries to ‘stand on their own feet’ with the ability to drive their own development. The message is that we need to be innovative in finding solutions that are relevant to the countries’ context.

We invite all the participants to approach the Forum within this context, so that we can make the Cape Town gathering an important reference point for moving forward on a new way of doing business – thereby making the most from the existing evidence from research. Research is for the good of the people and people need solutions to problems in order to make their lives better.

12 January 2012 | EN

An international meeting aims to shake up donor−recipient relations in a quest for more enduring health gains, reports Beverly Petersen Stearns.

This year, a well-known international meeting on global health research will adopt a provocative new theme.

The subtitle of Forum 2012, the successor to the conferences organised by the former Global Forum for Health Research, will be ‘Beyond Aid’.

No longer will the conference focus mainly on the use of funds from traditional donors and funders of health research in Europe and North America to improve the developing world’s morbidity and mortality statistics.

Click here for more on this story.

Source: www.scidev.net

Prof Carel IJsselmuiden, MD, MPH, FFCH(SA)

The COHRED Group’s Health Research Web (HRWeb), an online-based information and management platform has managed to get an honorable mention in the most recent report of the US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethics.

On page 49 of the Report, which is titled “Moral Science – Protecting Participants in Human Subjects Research”, HRWeb gets a mention as a useful contemporary tool for public access to information on the links between human subjects, health research and ethics.

The Report – which was commissioned by President Barack Obama at the end of 2010 and then released in December 2011 (see: http://bioethics.gov/cms/sites/default/files/Moral%20Science%20-%20Final.pdf) – states that:

“Other notable efforts to enhance accountability and access to information about human subjects research are also underway. For example, ‘Health Research Web’, initiated by the Council on Health Research for Development, an international nongovernmental organization whose primary objective is to strengthen research for health and innovation, compiles information on studies taking place around the world, as well as information about IRBs and research ethics committees, countries’ governance policies, and other useful data”.

Governments, research ethics committees, research institutions and networks in the South use HRWeb as their own management information system – an easy channel through which they can organise and disseminate research policies, priorities and requests. The platform operates as space for an online community of people that are interested in building and sustaining a ‘health for all’ information management system that enables practitioners to push for health, equity and development through research. The platform enables users to find, use and share information that is required in order to achieve these goals.

Best wishes,

Carel.