Mali-Guinea Research Leadership Training Program for Sustainable control and elimination of Malaria and Neglected tropical diseases

Project Summary/Abstract Malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) remain significant causes of morbidity and mortality throughout Guinea and Mali, despite substantial progress achieved through implementation at large scale of prevention and control interventions. The World Health Organization (WHO) set a goal to defeat both malaria and NTDs by 2030. To achieve this goal, disease control programs face several challenges, including the continuous need to adjust responses in line with outbreaks and resurgences, changing epidemiological patterns, and development of drug and insecticide resistance. Operational (OR) and operational and implementation research (OIR) can serve to evaluate current programs and intervention strategies and adapt evidence-based interventions to meet the evolving needs of these disease control programs. This research training grant will build upon current training programs to train the next generation of leadership in OIR to ensure sustained, high performance of the local health systems, surveillance, monitoring and evaluation and timely scale up efforts of malaria and NTD control interventions. This renewal application leverages a highly productive public health research training program built over the past 10 years at USTTB, that has enhanced local faculty development, including eight trainees from the initial cohorts of the program, strengthened the health system with alumni playing leadership roles in the health system, and continues to train 25 MPH students each year. The training program recently extended to Guinea and has strengthened south-south collaborations with the development of a similar training program at UGANC with participation of USTTB Faculty. The renewal application for a Mali-Guinea Leadership Training Program will provide support for 6 PhD and 8 MPH students. The program will build a new public health concentration in Implementation Research through Faculty enrichment and curriculum development, with support from JHU. The program will facilitate a harmonized training curricula and strengthen mentorship capacity and mutualization at USTTB and UGANC in order to ensure the sustainability of health services research needs to support malaria and NTD elimination efforts. A component of this training proposal is collaboration between USTTB, UGANC and JHU faculty and graduate students; Malian and Guinean faculty and PhD students will travel to JHU, where they will pursue additional training, and benefit from exchanges with JHU doctoral students and faculty. The program will also support short courses, workshops, and new diploma courses focused on hands-on OIR, contributing to the efforts of producing a critical mass of trained public health professional, managers and researchers capable of working closely together to undertake OIR on malaria and NTDs to refine existing control interventions most efficiently in local contexts.