MUST Among 7 African Countries to receive PEPFAR Funding for Health Professional Education in Africa

Mbarara University Among seven African countries to receive PEPFAR Funding for Health professional Education in Africa from September 2018 to August 2023

This is yet another remarkable achievement for Mbarara University Science and Technology featuring among SEVEN universities in Africa (see list below) that received the Health Professional Education Partnership Initiative grant. The overarching goal of the initiative is to encourage activities that prepare an African workforce capable of meeting the biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs in PEPFAR-priority countries with a high burden of HIV/AIDS.

Mbarara University Health professional Education Partnership Initiative-Transforming Ugandan Institutions Training Against HIV/AIDS (HEPI-TUITAH)

Narrative: Education in HIV/AIDS care and service delivery at MUST and its partner training institutions will provide undergraduate health professional students and primary healthcare providers with clinical skills and research capacity that will contribute to reduction of HIV/AIDS burden in Uganda. The program is significant in its focus on increasing health services delivery and research in rural Uganda and inclusion of nurses and midwives, given the disproportionate burden of HIV/AIDS borne by women in Sub-Saharan Africa.

SPECIFIC AIMS

To address the health-professional training that will be critical to lessening the HIV/AIDS burden – particularly in rural Uganda – MUST and its partner institutions in Uganda (Bishop Stuart and Lira Universities) and the US (Massachusetts General Hospital) proposed the HEPI-TUITAH. This inter-professional HIV/AIDS service-improvement training program for health professionals will build on the successes in the MEPI-MESAU consortium and the current Mbarara University Research Training Initiative (MURTI; D43TW010128, PI: Obua), which focuses on building research capacity in rural southwestern Uganda.  TUITAH has the following specific aims:

1.   To increase the competency of undergraduate medical, nursing, midwifery, and allied health professional students in the management of HIV/AIDS through the “low dose, high frequency” training model for quality clinical education, patient care, and HIV prevention services in Uganda.  We will apply the “low dose high frequency” (LDHF) training model of focused didactics complemented by comprehensive clinical practica to provide rigorous clinical education in HIV/AIDS patient care and prevention services in rural Uganda.

2.   To enhance the capacity of primary health care providers to provide comprehensive HIV services and strengthen bidirectional linkages between health facilities and communities in rural Uganda.   We will provide in-service training in HIV care and service delivery to primary care providers through tailored short courses adopting the LDHF training model. In addition, the primary care providers will work with community health extension workers to strengthen linkages between health facilities and the communities.

3.   To develop the capacity of undergraduate health professional students in rural Uganda to conduct locally relevant biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and operations research in HIV and its co-morbidities. Students in the Aim 1 training will be invited to form small inter-professional, multi-disciplinary research teams, identify an HIV-related research question, engage a senior mentor(s), and submit a proposal to conduct a mentored pilot research study. In Years 2, 3, and 4, we will competitively select and fund 24 12-month studies that will serve as research training practica for participants as well as contribute to local HIV research knowledge and capacity. These will be equitability distributed among the partner institutions.

4.   To strengthen a network of health professional training institutions (HPTIs) by building a community of practice and leveraging local resources and expertise to mitigate the national HIV/AIDS burden.  We will build a community of training, mentorship, and practice among partner educational institutions in Uganda, disseminate our model through the knowledge management model, and leverage local resources and expertise to mitigate the national HIV/AIDS burden.

HEPI awards:

  1. Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University
  2. Kenya: University of Nairobi
  3. Mozambique: Eduardo Mondlane University/Mozambique Institute for Health Education and Research
  4. Tanzania: Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Science
  5. Uganda: Mbarara University of Science and Technology – (TUITAH; 1R25TW011210 PI: Obua)
  6. Uganda: Makerere University
  7. Zimbabwe: University of Zimbabwe

Resources:

http://bit.ly/AfricanHealthEd

https://www.fic.nih.gov/News/GlobalHealthMatters/september-october-2018/Pages/african-health-education.aspx?utm_campaign=ghm&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ghm2018september

RFAs

https://www.fic.nih.gov/Programs/Pages/health-professional-education-partnership-initiative-hepi.aspx

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-TW-18-001.html

MEPI program page:

https://www.fic.nih.gov/Programs/Pages/medical-education-africa.aspx