[afro-nets] Call for Applications: First AMANET Workshop on Advanced Health Research Ethics for Investigators

General afro-nets
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Call for Applications: First AMANET Workshop on Advanced Health Research Ethics for Investigators

http://www.amanet-trust.org/ext/news/AHRECall2008.html

DATES: 23 - 27 June 2008
LOCATION: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
DEADLINE for applications: 30 May 2008

BACKGROUND/RATIONALE
The high disease burden of African countries, the emergence of new diseases, and efforts to address the10/90 gap, have led to an unprecedented increase in health research activities in Africa. In light of the generally poor health delivery systems, the lower levels of education, and poverty of communities and governments, it has become imperative that HRE in Africa be strengthened in order to minimise the risk of unethical research being conducted on the poor populations.

Historically, research participants and research institutions have been exposed to abuse and are inadequately prepared to handle complexities that characterize justice and beneficence desirable for research involving human participants and communities. This is ever so important in the less developed world where regulatory systems are either very weak or nonexistent in majority of cases.

Over the next three years, and through a grant from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, AMANET will organize a series of 5 workshops on Advanced Health Research Ethics (HRE) primarily for health investigators and secondarily for Ethics Committee members and policy makers. Since the workshops will be at an advanced level, basic HRE training will be a pre-requisite. The first workshop will be held in Dar es Salaam from 23 to 27 June 2008.

PRECEDENCE:
AMANET continues to champion the need for training in biomedical research ethics to various stakeholders of research in Africa. With regard to health research ethics for ethics review committees, the following workshops have been organized by AMANET:
-Workshops on Ethics in Health Research in Africa, in Kenya (Kisumu, 2001), Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, 2001), South Africa (2002, Pretoria), Gabon, (Libreville, 2002), Sudan (Khartoum, 2003), Cameroon (Yaoundé, 2003), Ethiopia (2007), Ghana (2008) Senegal (in French, 2008) and Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, 2005, 2006 and 2007)
-Workshop on Standard Operating Procedures for Ethics Review of Health Research in Africa, 17-21 February 2003, Entebbe, Uganda;
-Workshop on Advanced Ethics in Biomedical Research that Involves Human Subjects, 1-3 December 2004, Zanzibar, Tanzania; and
-Workshop on Protection of Human Research Participants: Writing of Standard Operating Procedures for Ethics Review Committees in Eastern Africa: 29-31 August 2005, Dar es salaam, Tanzania.

Reports on the above activities are available in the various issues of the AMANET Newsletter available online at: www.amanet-trust.org.

WORKSHOP PEDAGOGICAL METHODS
The workshop will apply participatory approaches including overviews, case studies, discussion groups, panellists, and participants presentations and other interactive and adult teaching/learning methods. To broaden discussions special panels for some of the topics will be convened. Lecture type presentations will be followed by question and answer sessions. Experienced facilitators have been carefully selected from within Africa.

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS (SELECTION)
Basic HRE training and participation in the AMANET online HRE Discussion Forum will be considered in the selection process. The online Discussion Forum can be accessed via the AMANET website (); some of the case studies discussed online will be used during the workshop. The target candidates are health researchers, but few places may be available for applicants outside these criteria. Interested candidates who meet the selection criteria should submit their applications by the 30th of May 2008.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES
This workshop aims firstly to flag topical ethical issues that are relevant to health research in developing country settings, and secondly to explore various schools of thought with the aim of coming up with well thought out positions and/or recommendations. Examples and case studies pertinent to Africa will be used. The following are the highlights of the topics to be covered:
-Applying Ethical principles in Health Research and Ethical review process
-Responsibilities in Health Research
-Ethical issues in research design and recruitment of research participants.

-Research with vulnerable persons and groups
-Legal and social issues in Health Research Ethics
-Ethical Issues in international collaborative health research
-Models and practicalities of community consultation
-Ethical issues surrounding the 10/90 gap
-Ethical issues in traditional medical practice and “research”
-Professional Ethics
-Animal Research Ethics

WORKSHOP OUTCOMES
By the end of the five day workshop, it is further hoped that:
-Participants will be brought up to date with topical ethical issues around current research practices;
-Participants will be able to address ethical issues at the design stage of health research and be able to enhance the protection of the welfare of research participants when implementing health research protocols.

LANGUAGE:
The workshop will be conducted in English; there will be no translations to other languages.

WORKSHOP REPORTS:
Three participants will be nominated to be rapporteurs for the workshop.
Proceedings will be recorded for publication in the AMANET newsletter and will be available for participants.

AMANET SCHOLARSHIP
Selected participants will be awarded scholarships by AMANET, which will cover costs for economy class airfares (where needed), visas, tuition and accommodation and meals. Participants should meet all their home country transit costs.

TIMELINES:
-This call sent out on or before 30 April 2008
-Applications should reach AMANET secretariat NO LATER THAN 30 May 2008
-Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted, a list of selected candidates will be made available on the AMANET web site.
-Selected participants will be informed by 15 June 2008

APPLICATIONS (with brief CVs and one-half page justification) SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY EMAIL to:

The Managing Trustee,
African Malaria Network Trust,
Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology Building,
PO Box 33207,
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
E-mail: info@amanet-trust.org
Fax: +255 22 2700380
http://www.amanet-trust.org

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The workshop is supported by a grant to AMANET from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on strengthening institutional health research ethics in Africa.

--
Charles Wanga
mailto:clwanga@amanet-trust.org

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Dear Colleagues

I am glad that AMANET is addressing the issue of Health Research Ethics (HRE) ... but rather less enthusiastic about the modality that has been funded.

I am an old corporate cost accountant and former chief financial officer (CFO) ... my expertise is in the analysis and understanding of how much things cost and what sort of value is being achieved. I have applied this in both the corporate setting and in the international relief and development sector ... and have used it to develop an analysis framework called Community Impact Accountancy.

In the global health sector, and in the malaria sub-sector, there are some very substantial fund flows, but rather little that shows that the funds are achieving good outcomes. Bluntly put, the cost accounting is notable by its almost total absence ... and results are more often than not broad generalizations about impact from very small (tiny) surveys.

In the malaria arena the scaling up of fund flows has resulted, it appears, in some improvement in the malaria burden situation ... but hardly any of this is being done in ways that ensure sustainability. This is a crisis waiting to happen. Costs are being incurred in many parts of Africa with funding from various donors (GFATM, PMI, etc) but the feedback about results tends to be much more about how much was done with the money (bednets delivered, for example, or number of houses sprayed, or drug doses administered) than it is specifics about the reduction in malaria burden. It is interesting that Eritrea or Zanzibar results are frequently being used to indicate how the funding is having success ... but why so little from all the other locations.

From a professional cost accounting perspective this is totally inadequate. From this perspective, the first thing that is needed in order to get improvement in ethics is to start working with decent data about costs and results so that high cost and low result activities can be eliminated and the resources better used for the reduction in malaria burden in African society.

With good (old fashioned) cost accounting it will become apparent that there are quite distinct performance issues in different geographic areas ... not just the mapping being done that relates weather and geography ... but other characteristics of the area that include people, housing, physical environment, vegetation, water. mosquitoes, history of past interventions, and on and on. ALL these characteristics and more are needed to determine what should be done in a given location ... to get the best outcomes and to do it at least cost.

The idea that cost accounting is expensive needs to be addressed. Cost accounting is NOT costly when it is done correctly ... though it becomes very expensive when it is done using international staff with little of accounting background and experience. Cost accounting is not a subset of a monitoring and evaluation exercise, but is, or ought to be, a part of any management structure.

Cost effectiveness is a big issue in the ethics of health ... and health research. It is not the only issue, but it does tend to be off the table ... and it is pretty clear that there are major ethical issues around the fund flows and their use.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess

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Peter Burgess
The Transparency and Accountability Network: Tr-Ac-Net in New York
http://www.tr-ac-net.org
IMMC - The Integrated Malaria Management Consortium Inc.
Community Impact Accountancy http://tracnetoncia.blogspot.com
The Tr-Ac-Net blogs ... start at http://tracnetvision.blogspot.com
+1 917 432 1191 or +1 212 772 6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com