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The Global Health Research Initiative (GHRI) is launching the Africa Health System Initiative Support to African Research Partnerships (AHSI-RES), a program of research that forms one part of the larger CIDA-supported Africa Health System Initiative http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/CIDAWEB/acdicida.nsf/En/JUD-824143542-PTE. AHSI focuses on strengthening national-level health strategies and architecture, ensuring appropriate human resources for health, strengthening front-line service delivery and building stronger health information management systems, all with special attention to equity considerations. AHSI-RES will support work on these themes and its objectives are to:

 

1.     support African research partnerships to provide answers to relevant operational issues and needs of African health systems that are aligned with African government strategies and research priorities and

2.     demonstrate a clear link between research, policy and action to improve health programming in Africa.

 

Activities addressing these objectives will strengthen partnerships, build local research capacity and knowledge relevant to selected low and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

 

CIDA and IDRC are partnering to provide CAD $8.7 million over five years through research, knowledge translation and exchange, synthesis and synergy grants, and dissertation award to African health system researchers, managers, and African-Canadian teams.

 

In October 2006, the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research hosted a preliminary consultation at the request of CIDA[1]. African and Canadian advisors, as well as key members of the African health research and development community were invited to express their views on what is needed to strengthen health systems in sub-Saharan Africa and to explore potential research themes and granting criteria. AHSI-RES is based on the programmatic themes emerging from this consultation:

 

1.      human resources for health,

2.      equity in health systems development and

3.      effective real-time monitoring of health outcomes.

 

 

Research under this theme will explore the effectiveness of new and current training, retraining and retention systems for front-line health workers that link with community initiatives.

 

Research under this theme will address accessible, appropriate and responsive systems, including health information systems, to address equity issues (including gender equality) and mechanisms for pro-poor funding.

 

Effective real-time monitoring of health outcomes

Research under this theme will investigate real-time monitoring methods and strategies that provide timely results and allow for adjustments as needed to overcome programming barriers and constraints. 

 

 

AHSI-RES will focus in the following regions:

 

Francophone West Africa (Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin),

Great Lakes and Eastern Africa (Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya) and

Southern Africa (Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia).

 

 

A small group composed of Canadian and international experts advises GHRI in designing the program of activities for the AHSI-RES program:

 

 

 

GHRI is launching an invitation for proposals from Africa-based research organisations to plan and coordinate regional consultations to identify specific priorities: for research, evaluation, synthesis, capacity development, and the development of knowledge translation and exchange networks. Based in part on the key messages from the consultations, subsequent call for research and synthesis proposals will be launched in winter 2008-2009.

 

In partnership with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Ford Foundation, the African Population and Health Research Center awarded 20 dissertation fellowships to doctoral students enrolled in sub-Saharan African universities who are conducting health-systems or sexuality related research. This is expected to lead to a higher retention of a new generation of highly skilled and locally trained African scholars in research and academic positions within the region. A first round of dissertation awards was funded by competition through IDRC’s Special Initiatives Division in collaboration with the Governance, Health and Equity group and AHSI-RES. This competition may be repeated annually.

 

 

For more information on AHSI, please visit www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/CIDAWEB/acdicida.nsf/En/JUD-824143542-PTE

For more information on AHSI-RES, please send an email to ahsi-res@idrc.ca

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