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

We have the following items for your attention:

1. All set for ISC/AGM

All roads lead to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the 2015 INDEPTH Scientific Conference (ISC) and Annual General Meeting (AGM) which will take place from 11 – 14 November.

About 350 delegates are expected to attend the conference at the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa.

This year’s ISC is on the theme “Health and Demographic Research to Inform the Post-2015 Development Agenda”.

There will be informative, educative and interesting presentations during the meeting.

On the opening day, two distinguished Ministers of Ethiopia: the Minister of Education H.E. Shiferaw Shigute (right) and Minister of Health H.E. Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu will give keynote addresses. Also expected to grace the occasion will the presidents of six universities in Ethiopia.

Additionally, a total of 31 universities will send representatives to the ISC. Prof Michele Barry from Stanford University, one of the world's best universities will lead a team of six Faculty heads. Eleven Heads of Ethiopian Regional Health Bureaus (RHBs) are also expected to attend, in addition to other officials from the Federal Ministry of Health.

Other delegates include the Editor In Chief of the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, Dr Justine Davies and the editor of The Lancet Global Health, Zoë Mullan. There will also be representatives from the UN Economic Commission for Africa and funders, including Hewlett Foundation and Sida.

Only recently, INDEPTH has had two articles published in two Lancet Journals. The papers are “CHESS: an innovative concept for a new generation of population surveillance” and “An INDEPTH look at global data collection”.

Not to be missed is the “State of the Network” address to be delivered by the Executive Director of INDEPTH, Prof Osman Sankoh. A former Executive Director of INDEPTH and now Vice Chancellor of the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) in Ghana, Prof. Fred Binka will share his experiences on Phase IV trials in Africa on the topic “Conducting Phase IV Studies in Africa - the INESS Experience”.

Delegates can look forward to listening to Prof. Steve Tollman, Director of the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) and the Health and Population Division in the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand for his presentation on adult health and ageing.

The Executive Director of the Geneva-based Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED), Prof. Carel IJsselmuiden, will be an independent Assessor at the conference.

Ten young scientists sponsored by INDEPTH will also be at the ISC to make various presentations.

The ISC and AGM will be preceded by meetings of the INDEPTH Scientific Advisory Committee and Board on the 9th and 10th November 2015 respectively.

Perhaps what most delegates will be looking forward to will be who receives the prize of $3,000 for the best research work.

Also, which member centre will receive the prize for promoting INDEPTH Network on its homepage?

The ISC 2015 is hosted by the five HDSSs in Ethiopia namely Butajira, Dabat, Gilgel Gibe, Kersa and Kilite Awlaelo; and sponsored by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health, Sida, Wellcome Trust, Hewlett Foundation and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Sure this will be an ISC to remember ….

Prof. Marcel Tanner, Board Chair	Prof. Osman Sankoh Executive Director

2. ISC/AGM 2015 Programme

Programme: Please download the programme here and kindly circulate. Note that we have scheduled special sessions for editors of world’s leading health and scientific journals.

3. INDEPTH PhD Position at Swiss TPH

The INDEPTH Network will fund a PhD studentship tenable at Swiss TPH/University of Basel in Basel, Switzerland for the development of innovative methods to improve estimates of out-of-pocket payments for health services in low and middle-income countries.

The PhD will be developed in the framework of the INDEPTH project “Household Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditures Tracking for Disease Specific Health Account and Universal Health Coverage Measure: Developing and testing Household OOP Estimation Methodology” (iHOPE).
The project is implemented by INDEPTH member centres in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Vietnam.

The department of health system financing at the World Health Organisation (WHO) is a key partner in this project and they are providing technical and other expertise to the project.

The closing date for applications is 15 November 2015.

4. Call for DELTAS Sub-Saharan Africa Consortium for Advanced Biostatistics Training (S2 ACABT) Masters and PhD in Biostatistics fellowships for 2016 Academic Year

The Sub-Saharan African Consortium for Advanced Biostatistical Training (S2ACABT), a consortium of twenty African and northern institutions with the University of the Witwatersrand as the lead; and KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programmes, Universities of KwaZulu-Natal, Warwick and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as co-applicants, has secured funding from the Wellcome Trust/AESA through the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Traning and Science (DELTAS). 

The funding will cover Masters and PhD programmes in Biostatistics in participating training institutions to develop and improve biostatistical skills among researchers, with an ultimate goal of creating research nodes of excellence to grow the discipline and a biostatistical network to nurture researchers with advanced skills and expertise. The consortium is, therefore, calling for full time scholarship applications for Masters and PhD degrees.

The scholarships are open to candidates with strong background in either Statistics, Mathematics, Demography, any other quantitative fields, including competent candidates from the lab/health field such as biomedical sciences, pharmacy, medicine who may benefit from a postgraduate course in biostatistics. The potential fellows should have applied for a place at one of the postgraduate biostatistics degree programmes being offered by partner institutions.

Application deadline for Masters Scholarships: 15th December 2015.
Application deadline for PhD Scholarships: 31st March 2016.
Please see attached for details.