Universities to improve maternal health

Project title: South Ethiopian Network of Universities in Public Health (SENUPH).

Background

Malaria remains a major public health problem in southern Ethiopia, often affecting communities with large epidemics. Malaria is also a severe disease among pregnant women, and leads to premature births, increased neonatal deaths and limits the growth of children.

Childhood malnutrition is a priority health problem in the country and available data suggest that complementary feeding practices are far from satisfactory. In addition, some areas are repeatedly affected by drought that limits their household’s food security.

There is a shortage of faculty to conduct proper teaching in public health at graduate level and to carry out sound and development oriented research at the South Ethiopian partner institutions. In addition, since most of the partner Universities are young, they need to strengthen their graduate, and develop their post-graduate programmes. Thus, the formation of Networks of Universities will help to establish and expand graduate and postgraduate programmes to alleviate the deficit of qualified faculty and to identify priority areas of research. The network will also encourage efficient human resource mobilization.

Improving public health through capacity building for education and research through University Network

Through this project capacity will be built among the staff at the partner universities Hawassa University, Dilla University, Wolaita Sodo University and Arba Minch University, while Addis Ababa University and University of Bergen will contribute with academic and administrative competence in developing curricula, teach and supervise students for new Masters and PhD programmes and support supervisory skills development for staff at the partner institutions.

New programs within public health at PhD and Master level will be established to educate professionals within the field of maternal and reproductive health, nutrition and entomology, based on new knowledge through implementation research in a local context. The teaching will be problem-based and also community-based, using community sites for training and research activities.

In the research and teaching, the proposed network will prioritize maternal and child health, preventing malaria and improving community nutrition. The research topics will be defined in close collaboration with the regional Ministry of Health as well as consultations with the health departments at lower administrative levels, ensuring that the research is relevant for the needs in the region and will provide important knowledge for policy development and implementation, with the aim of impacting the populations health in the long run.

Through the research the aim is to contribute to decrease of disease incidents, prevalence and morbidity and mortality to locally acceptable level. The studies will also include a focus on the climate link. This will be done in a close collaboration with Bjerknes Climate Research Centre in Bergen, Norway and the National Meteorological Agency in Ethiopia.

It is understood that gender mainstreaming is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integrated dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the policies and programmes so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not preserved. The project will ensure that at least 50% of the postgraduate opportunities will be provided to female candidates, gender aspects are being highlighted in the research topics and in several research cases directly targeted, and various initiatives and incentives are included to ensure female participation in the programmes and to decrease attrition rates.

Key goals and achievements

Overall goal

To improve the health of populations in South Ethiopia, especially on maternal and child health, nutrition and reducing malaria.

The objectives of the project are

1. South-South collaboration in graduate level education strengthened
2. Improved capacity of institutions within the network to handle graduate training
3. Capacity built in applied gender-sensitive research undertaking that informs policy
4. Relevant and quality PhD and Masters training in place at partner institutions
5. Equitable representation of gender in graduate training