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. INTREC Final Stakeholders conference held in Accra

Forty-six participants have attended the INDEPTH Training and Research Centres of Excellence (INTREC) Final Stakeholders conference in Accra from May 21 – 22, 2015.  The INTREC programme was developed to provide junior researchers in Africa and Asia an opportunity to improve their understanding of the framework and concepts of Social Determinants of Health (SDH) and to enable them to present their research findings in an actionable form to decision makers.

The EU funded programme that began in January 2012 is a result of collaboration action between several international partners, including University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Heidelberg University, Germany; Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia; Harvard University, USA; Umea University, Sweden and INDEPTH Network.

This two-day meeting was for stakeholders to among others review and discuss the main findings as well as lessons learned; INTREC conceptual framework for thedevelopment of a sustainable programme for capacity-building into social determinants of health (SDH) research for LMICs; key ideas and issues that will form the final report of the project and the future of the INTREC concept and products.

In his opening presentation, the Executive Director of the INDEPTH Network, Prof Osman Sankoh, said through its global network, INDEPTH is developing requisite information base, providing high quality longitudinal data about the lives of people and how development policies and programmes impact on those lives.

He said in future, INDEPTH will look at greater partnership with health facilities as well as sustainable development goals, civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) and health systems.

Giving a background of the programme, Principal Investigator of INTREC, Prof Peter Byass, said INTREC is a professional development programme designed for INDEPTH scientists interested in SDH.  He said the meeting was a critical part of formulating ideas and issues for the final report.

Participants of INTREC stakeholders meeting in group picture

2. 2014 Publications

Twenty eight (28) centres have so far submitted their 2014 publications to the Secretariat (list below). We congratulate them for their good work and thank them for their cooperation. For those who are yet to do so kindly submit by next week.

3. Survey for member centres

The information elicited in the attached short form is aimed at gathering specific details on clinical laboratory capacity at INDEPTH member centres. This is a complement to the member survey and is aimed at designing a study on diseases burden in our communities that explores the full potential of a comprehensive data system. We will appreciate receiving responses by early next week (for those who haven't sent already) as this will be summarised for proposal by month end. Please send the responses to our Capacity Strengthening & Training Manager Dr Martin Bangha (martin.bangha@indepth-network.org).