Friday Newsletter from the Secretariat
13th March 2015

Dear Centre Leaders,
Greetings from the INDEPTH Secretariat. We hope you have had a good week.

We have the following items for your attention this week:

1. Ifakara hosts research to policy meeting
 The Ifakara Health Institute (HI) in Tanzania will host a meeting of stakeholders to discuss practical strategies of bridging the gap between research and policy . The forum to be held in Dar es Salaam early next month follows similar events in Navrongo, Ghana, in December 2014 and Vadu in Pune, India in February 2015.

Such meetings enhance the visibility of INDEPTH brand, its HDSS centres and their work. The in-country meetings kick-start the interaction between HDSS, researchers, media, academia, local government officials and policy makers. Stakeholders are informed about the existence of HDSS and the platforms’ immense potential to fill the data gap in developing countries and support health policy development. Also click to read: Workshop to kick-start linkages between HDSS sites in the pipeline

2. Scientific conference registration opens

Registration for this year’s INDEPTH Scientific Conference (ISC 2015) is now open. The conference will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from November 11 – 14, 2015. It is on the theme “Health and Demographic Research to Inform the Post-2015 Development Agenda”.

All are encouraged to register here:



3. A call to participate in an exciting Survey on HDSS Ethics

A PhD student, jointly supervised by our Executive Director, Prof Osman Sankoh, is kindly requesting you to respond to a 15-30 minute online survey on “?New Models of Public Health Research: Developing an Ethical Framework for Research Using Surveillance Data (RUSD) in Resource Limited Countries”.

The study aims at exploring characteristics of research involving use of existing or previously collected health and demographic surveillance systems (HDSS) data, and to document challenges researchers and ethics committees face in applying existing ethics guidelines to such research. 

The ultimate goal is to develop a practical and context appropriate guidance document to support future ethical conduct and review. 

The study is being conducted by Evelyn Anane-Sarpong, a Ghanaian student of the Institute for Biomedical Ethics and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel, in collaboration with the INDEPTH Network.

If you are willing to, please click on the following link to access the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BDV8K7R


Thank you.
Have a restful weekend!

Becky Kwei

Quick links

  • INDEPTH Resident Research Fellows (IRRF) Competition 2015 - read more
  • Humboldt young climate & health research grants - read more
  • The CIRCLE Visiting Fellowship programme - read more
Policy Engagement and Communications
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