HBNU 2022 Mentorship Workshop
Kelsey Carthew & Jordan Balletto
After hosting a virtual Mentorship Symposium in June 2021, the NIH-funded, HBNU Fogarty Global Health Training Program was excited to host an in-person workshop in May 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa for a select number of mentors. The theme of the Cape Town-based workshop was “Mentoring the Mentors” and was comprised of two full days of competency-based training material, including case examples of successful country mentorship programs, panel discussions, and small group skill-based activities. Topics included tools for professional development, strengthening communication and conflict resolution, virtual mentoring in the COVID-19 pandemic, capacity-building, and ethical considerations for effective mentorship.
In this hybrid workshop, we were very glad to be joined by twenty mentors in person from multiple sites including the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Partnership in Botswana, Addis Continental Institute of Public Health in Ethiopia, the University of Lagos in Nigeria and the Public Health Foundation of India, among others. We were fortunate to have mentors join us virtually as well, allowing for more mentors to join despite logistical challenges. We are looking forward to seeing this workshop develop as well as the deliverables that may result.
Launch of the Research Training on Harnessing Data Science for Global Health Priorities in Africa Program
After a successful HBNU Mentorship Workshop, the team moved onto Durban, South Africa to meet with colleagues for the launch of the Research Training on Harnessing Data Science for Global Health Priorities in Africa Program. This program is being implemented as a collaboration between the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (USA), and Heidelberg University (Germany). The program will be known as WASHA Takwimu – WASHA standing for “Working on Applications for Data Science and Health in Africa” and “Takwimu” meaning “Ignite Data” in Swahili. WASHA Takwimu is supported by a training grant (U2RTW012140) awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Fogarty International Center (FIC). The program aims to build data science research capacity in Africa with UKZN as the hub, and four partners (spokes) in sub-Saharan Africa including, Nigeria (University of Ibadan), Uganda (Makerere University), Tanzania (Muhimbili University), and Ghana (University of Ghana).
This program brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers and expert faculty with in-depth experience in data science and the projects’ global health priority areas – 1) health systems strengthening; and 2) food systems, climate change, and planetary health.
The formal launch of this program took place on May 26th in Durban, South Africa, and was attended in-person, as well as virtually by representatives from all three institutions, as well as the Spoke partners. The team spent multiple days in strategic planning meetings during their time in Durban and were able to engage in rich discussions about plans for data science capacity building, network linkages, research collaboration, and mentorship opportunities.
A fundamental component of this DSI program will be the training of master’s, doctoral, and post-doctoral level researchers. The first cohort of postdoctoral trainees has been selected and are planning to spend time at all three partner institutions during their training. We are excited to welcome these three accomplished fellows to Harvard for the Fall 2022 semester!
You must be logged in to post a comment.