Friday Newsletter
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Dear Centre Leaders,
We hope you have had a good week.
We have the following items for your attention:
  • Household health expenditure project team discuss instruments 
  • Confirmation of Attendance -INDEPTH AGM 2016
  • INDEPTH ED talks about data sharing networks at Grand Challenges meet
  • Researchers share experience on mental health 
  • INDEPTH in The Lancet
  • Invitation to join  the Maternal and Newborn Working Group
  • Hanoi school of public health team attend training
  • Factors influencing willingness to participate in new drug trial studies
  • Highlights from the 2nd Uganda Maternal - Newborn Symposium 
1. Household health expenditure project team discuss instruments 
iHOPE meeting participants at the NHRC.
A four-day pre-pilot test and data collection meeting, which started on 24 October 2016, is underway at the Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC) in Upper East Region, Ghana, to discuss country specific instruments for measuring household out-of-pocket health payments (OOPs) in four countries, namely, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Vietnam.

The meeting is being organised by the INDEPTH Network under the auspices of the INDEPTH Health Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (iHOPE) project with funding from the Gates Foundation. The rationale for the meeting is against the backdrop of ongoing debates on the post-2015 development agenda, which emphasises Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as a key element to help improve equity in access to healthcare and thus population health status. Universal Health Coverage is expected to reduce reliance OOPs and increase reliance on pre-payment mechanisms. 
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2. Confirmation of Attendance -INDEPTH AGM 2016
This is a kind reminder for Centre Leaders who have not yet confirmed participation to the INDEPTH 2016 AGM. Please click this link that will get you to the survey page.

 The AGM will be held at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala, Uganda, from 16-18 November 2016.  The average rates per room, per night are USD 115, we have made block bookings for all our participants. Centre Leaders have to reimburse INDEPTH the cost of their accommodation. Read more
3.  INDEPTH ED talks about data sharing networks at Grand Challenges meet
Prof. Sankoh and Prof Abdallah Daar.
INDEPTH Executive Director Prof. Osman Sankoh was among over 1000 scientists from around the world who attended the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in London from 24-26 October 2016. Prof. Sankoh made a presentation "Building Cooperative Data Sharing Networks in LMICs: The Case of the INDEPTH Network".

Prof. Sankoh and Prof. Ernst Hafen, the Co-Founder and President of the MIDATA Cooperative, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, also jointly presented a prospective study that envisions a citizen-driven and citizen-owned initiative for strengthening the health information systems in low and medium income countries (LMICs). 
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4. Researchers share experience on mental health 
Researchers who attended Accra Mental Health workshop.
The INDEPTH Network, with its dynamic health and demographic surveillance systems, can make a significant contribution to exploring mental health issues in multiple diverse rural and urban settings in low and middle income countries. In pursuance of this, INDEPTH organised a three days scoping workshop in Accra, Ghana, from 26-28 October 2016 that brought together researchers from seven INDEPTH research centres.

The researchers shared experiences in common mental health issues like depression, anxiety, stress, epilepsy, suicide and alcohol use; also in the social, economic and biologic determinants of mental illness in HDSS sites and the feasibility of integrating mental health in to primary health care. Read more
5.  INDEPTH in The Lancet :
Using health and demographic surveillance systems for teratovigilance in Africa
Increased funding in the past decade has improved healthcare coverage of the population and access to vaccines and drugs across sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is still a need to collect valid and sufficient baseline data, data on the safety of drugs and vaccines used during pregnancy, and for innovative approaches to pharmacovigilance in pregnancy to inform policymakers and to improve treatment guidelines. Read more 
6. Invitation to join  the Maternal and Newborn Working Group
All member HDSSs of the INDEPTH Network are potentially members of the Maternal and Newborn Working Group (MNWG), since they collect data on pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes. The group aims to grow the number of HDSSs in the MWNG in order to have a bigger pool of data, expertise and networks to work with and build on. You are invited to join. Read more
News from Centres
1. Hanoi school of public health team attend training
Hanoi School of Public Health.
To provide competency-based training program for health managers, the Ministry of Health in Vietnam held a workshop to "Developing competency – based training program for health managers” in Hanoi. 

The objective of the workshop was to identify the essential tasks of health managers and to unify their basic management framework. It also proposed a competency-based training program for the  health managers. 
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2. Factors influencing willingness to participate in new drug trial studies
A drug store in Navrongo.
During the last decade, the number of clinical trials conducted in sub-Saharan Africa has increased significantly which has helped to address priority health problems in the region. Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC) since it was established in 1989, has conducted several trial studies including rectal artesunate trial in the Kassena-Nankana districts. However, there is little evidence-base for assessing the impact of new drug trials. 

Though the implementation of clinical trials in the study area is believed to have positive impact on health status of people particularly trial participants, measures should however be taken to address safety and likely side effects of new drugs given to trial participants during these trial studies. This is the conclusion of a study that explored factors that motivate parents to allow their children to participate in new drug trials in northern Ghana. NHRC is an INDEPTH member centre. 
 Read more
3. Highlights from the 2nd Uganda Maternal - Newborn Symposium 
INDEPTH Maternal and Newborn Working Group leader Prof. Peter Waiswa (top–right).
The second Uganda Maternal and Newborn Symposium was held in Kampala, Uganda on Wednesday 19 October 2016 under the theme “Maternal and newborn care in Uganda: High Impact innovations for scale up.”

The Symposium was informed by Key note addresses, speeches, oral and poster presentations. During the 1st Symposium in 2015, the key focus areas were advocacy policy implementation, research and capacity building, scaling up newborn services, community and facility approaches to maternal and newborn services, newborn complications and management and quality of care. 
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Policy Engagement and Communications