WP2 – Capacity Building for Implementation Research

This Work Package will be led by UHAS with support from the Research and Development Division (RDD) of the Ghana Health Service (mandated to conduct research to provide evidence to guide programmatic actions and meet the needs of program managers and policy makers) and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), a research and academic institution. It will focus on assessing and addressing implementation bottlenecks in the access and delivery of new vaccines and other medical interventions with key stakeholders, health policy makers and program managers of institutions along the access and delivery value chain.

This work package (WP2) is led by Prof. Evelyn Ansah with support from Prof. Margaret Gyapong and the Research and Development Division of the Ghana Health Service. WP2 is embedded in the Institute of Health Research at the University of Health and Allied Sciences.

The institute is well recognized as a training centre for implementation research (IR) in Ghana. Staff of the institute have facilitated several IR proposal development workshops and have the requisite skills to implement the work package assigned to UHAS.

The Ministry of Health (MoH), Ghana Health Service (GHS), Food and Dugs Authority (FDA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) led access and delivery partnership (ADP) are key stakeholders in this work package. Members of the Access and Delivery Partnership (ADP) of the UNDP, PATH and TDR will provide technical support as strategic partners. Where appropriate, collaborations will be forged with public and private health providers, other research institutions, traditional and community leaders, caregivers and patients to support Implementation Research (IR) design and interventions.

This is to ensure buy in and inclusiveness in the decision-making process on the introduction and monitoring of any interventions at community level.

Objectives

The specific focus of WP2 is to build institutional and individual capacity in Implementation Research (IR) to address implementation bottlenecks that impede the nationwide scale up and use of new medical interventions. WP2 is therefore facilitating effective implementation and scale of the SAVING Project interventions, leveraging implementation research approaches. Particularly, interventions already identified by stakeholders will be implemented to promote access and delivery of the new malaria vaccine or any other medical intervention.