Abstract
Background: Globally, sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden of disease. Strengthened research capacity to understand the social determinants of health among different African populations is key to addressing the drivers of poor health and developing interventions to improve health outcomes and health systems in the region. Yet, the continent clearly lacks centers of research excellence that can generate a strong evidence base to address the region's socio-economic and health problems.Objective and program overview: We describe the recently launched Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), which brings together a network of nine academic and four research institutions from West, East, Central, and Southern Africa, and select northern universities and training institutes. CARTA's program of activities comprises two primary, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing objectives: to strengthen research infrastructure and capacity at African universities; and to support doctoral training through the creation of a collaborative doctoral training program in population and public health. The ultimate goal of CARTA is to build local research capacity to understand the determinants of population health and effectively intervene to improve health outcomes and health systems.Conclusions: CARTA's focus on the local production of networked and high-skilled researchers committed to working in sub-Saharan Africa, and on the concomitant increase in local research and training capacity of African universities and research institutes addresses the inability of existing programs to create a critical mass of well-trained and networked researchers across the continent. The initiative's goal of strengthening human resources and university-wide systems critical to the success and sustainability of research productivity in public and population health will rejuvenate institutional teaching, research, and administrative systems.
Highlights
Sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden of disease
Objective and program overview: We describe the recently launched Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), which brings together a network of nine academic and four research institutions from West, East, Central, and Southern Africa, and select northern universities and training institutes
The ultimate goal of CARTA is to build local research capacity to understand the determinants of population health and effectively intervene to improve health outcomes and health systems
Summary
Sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden of disease. Strengthened research capacity to understand the social determinants of health among different African populations is key to addressing the drivers of poor health and developing interventions to improve health outcomes and health systems in the region. These currently include many outstanding masters, doctoral, and postdoctoral training programs offered to scientists from low and middle income countries to enhance their research competencies; ‘learning by doing’ programs that offer developmental or seed grants, hands-on training in ongoing research programs, or mentorship programs that complement formal academic degree offerings; and northÁsouth and southÁsouth research partnerships focusing on training individual researchers and strengthening research collaborations so that outputs are greater than the sum of individual efforts [9] Their important contributions notwithstanding, these interventions have generally failed to create a critical mass of well-trained and networked researchers across the continent; increase research productivity; support university-wide systems critical to success and sustainability in research and training in Africa; address issues related to inadequate local training and poor retention of human resources for research, research leadership, and information access; and strengthen the interfaces between research producers and users [10]. (2) Higher education management training including efficient enrollment, monitoring and reporting procedures, identification of grant and fellowship
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