Abstract
Capacity building in implementation science is integral to PEPFAR’s mission and to meeting the 90–90–90 goals. The USAID funded Project SOAR sponsored a 4 day workshop for investigators and governmental and non-governmental partners from 12 African countries. The workshop was designed to address both findings from a pre-workshop online needs assessment as well as capacity challenges across the capacity building pyramid, from individual skills to institutional systems and resources. Activities were output-oriented and skill based. An online survey evaluated sessions and changes in perceptions of needs; a majority of respondents strongly agreed that after the workshop, they better understood their personal and institutional capacity strengthening needs. Participants ‘strongly agreed’ that workshop content was relevant to their jobs (90%) and that they left the workshop with a specific plan for conducting future research (65%). Workshop results suggest that skill-building should be done in conjunction with systems capacity building within the cultural context.
Highlights
Strengthening the skills and capacity of in-country individuals and institutions is an integral part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the agency established by the United States (U.S.) government in January 2003 to address the growing global HIV epidemic
This paper describes the workshop’s theoretical foundation, agenda development and implementation, impact on participants, and implications and recommendations for future HIV implementation science capacity strengthening initiatives with the goal of informing the expansion of similar efforts
Seventeen (65%) respondents had attended a workshop or short-course in the past 2 years with the majority participating in training that had been focused on data analysis (10/17) and study design (8/17)
Summary
Strengthening the skills and capacity of in-country individuals and institutions is an integral part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the agency established by the United States (U.S.) government in January 2003 to address the growing global HIV epidemic. The Office of Global AIDS Control which oversees PEPFAR, has begun funding local efforts to meet the 90–90–90 targets directly through USAID missions further underscoring the importance of regional capacity strengthening in implementation science. Implementation science capacity strengthening involves working with in-country public health researchers, health care workers, and policy makers to ensure that data collection efforts and findings directly inform public health policies, strategies, and/or guidelines, which are essential for achieving the 90–90–90 goals and improving health outcomes more broadly [7]. The importance of implementation science in curbing the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the need to engage key actors such as local researchers and
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