Recent snapshot surveys of research institutions in the African and Asian regions have revealed some significant gaps in the contracting and contract management capacity of low- and middle-income country (LMIC) institutions in these regions. Many institutions had not previously considered research contracting to be a legal issue and reported having no specialist legal expertise, with the result that contractual terms and conditions were often poorly understood. Without adequate legal capacity, contract negotiations can lead to agreements which disadvantage the LMIC partner. This guidance booklet is aimed at optimising research institution building through better contracts and contracting in research partnerships. It highlights the key issues for consideration when entering into formalised research partnerships, and provides tools and resources for negotiating fairer research contracts. Better contract negotiation expertise in LMIC institutions will help improve the distribution of benefits of collaborative research, such as overhead costs, data ownership, institutional capacity in research management, technology transfer, and intellectual property rights.
Useful Resources
These consolidated guidelines provide guidance on the diagnosis of HIV infection, the care of people living with HIV and the use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection. They are structured along the continuum of HIV testing, care and treatment. Behavioural, structural and biomedical interventions that do not involve the use of ARV drugs are not covered in these guidelines. The 2013 guidelines combine and harmonise recommendations from a range of World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and other documents. Comprehensive guidance is now provided on using ARV drugs across age groups and populations of adults, pregnant and breastfeeding women, adolescents, children and key populations. The guidelines also aim to consolidate and update clinical, service delivery and programmatic guidance. Consistent with previous WHO guidelines, the new guidelines are based on a public health approach to the further scaling up of ARV drugs for treatment and prevention that considers feasibility and effectiveness across a variety of resource-limited settings.
Global Research Nurses is a free network for all nurses with an interest in research. The aim is to give nurses the support, guidance, information and peer support they need to conduct their roles and enhance their careers as nurses working in research. Global Health Research Nurses offers four facilities: 1. A professional network where you can find colleagues nearby or across continents, via the Blogs, Bookmarks and Groups. 2. A Professional Membership Scheme. 3. Certificated e-learning short courses for skills in medical research. 4. Links to online learning.
The World Health Organisation developed this handbook to provide an overview for health inequality monitoring within low- and middle-income countries, and act as a resource for those involved in spearheading, improving or sustaining monitoring systems. The handbook was principally designed to be used by technical staff of ministries of health to build capacity for health inequality monitoring in World Health Organization Member States; however, it may also be of interest to public health professionals, researchers, students and others. Users of this handbook will be expected to have basic statistical knowledge and some familiarity with monitoring related issues. The handbook serves as a comprehensive resource to clarify the concepts associated with health inequality monitoring, illustrate the process through examples and promote the integration of health inequality monitoring within health information systems of low- and middle-income countries.
These guidelines offer to equip healthcare providers with evidence-based guidance as to how to respond to intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women. They also provide advice for policy makers, encouraging better coordination and funding of services, and greater attention to responding to sexual violence and partner violence within training programmes for health care providers. The guidelines are based on systematic reviews of the evidence, and cover a range of topics: identification and clinical care for intimate partner violence; clinical care for sexual assault; training relating to intimate partner violence and sexual assault against women; policy and programmatic approaches to delivering services; and mandatory reporting of intimate partner violence. They aim to raise awareness of violence against women among health-care providers and policy-makers, so that they better understand the need for an appropriate health-sector response. The standards provided here can form the basis for national guidelines, and for integrating these issues into health-care provider education.
Health Equity Impact Assessment (HEIA) tool has four key objectives: 1. Help identify unintended potential health equity impacts of decision-making (positive and negative) on specific population groups. 2. Support equity-based improvements in policy, planning, programme or service design. 3. Embed equity in an organisation’s decision-making processes. 4. Build capacity and raise awareness about health equity throughout the organisation. The HEIA tool includes a template and a workbook that provides users with step by step instructions on how to conduct an HEIA. The workbook walks users through five steps: scoping, potential impacts, mitigation, monitoring and dissemination. The results are recorded in the HEIA template. The tool may be used by organisations both inside and outside the health care system whose work can have an impact on health outcomes.
This is an interactive online platform and one-stop resource centre for civil society practitioners who want to work on improving the impact and quality of their development work. Whether you are starting to plan your work, or already have some tools and best practices to share, on this site you can access, share and rate tools, case studies and best practices from CSOs around the world, on implementing each of the eight Istanbul Principles and advocating for an enabling environment.
Participatory mapping, commonly used in participatory development, plays an important role in helping marginalised groups by making visible the association between land and local communities, highlighting important social, historical and cultural knowledge as well as presenting geographical feature information. This review is intended to provide a broad background in the use of participatory mapping processes and the range of tools available to practitioners. It is not exhaustive but aims to give readers a greater appreciaion of how participatory mapping has involved from a relatively simplistic participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tool into a community of practice spanning a range of sophisticated technologies and processes. It draws on a number of examples from around the world, with special attention given to projects supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), as this organisation commissioned the review. However, it contains useful insights, lessons and pitfalls in both the processes and tools available for participatory mapping.
This monitoring and evaluation framework is a guide for project implementers to help them develop national monitoring and evaluation plans to monitor and report on progress when implementing mobile messaging programmes for mothers. The key objective of this framework is to ensure that MAMA programme outputs meet the needs of the target population. The indicators presented in this framework can be used to monitor and report on progress in the implementation of the various MAMA initiative components in countries.
Since the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health in Rio de Janeiro last 2011, there has been a surge of interest and commitment among different stakeholders, especially WHO Member States, to addressing the social determinants of health to achieve health equity. In order to support this growing global movement, the Secretariat now launches a newly-revitalised website that captures the considerable body of work done since the launch of the report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health in 2008. The website’s contents are more accessible and better organised, and include useful information in three areas. 1. Evidence established by WHO and its partners on the various themes covered by the Commission’s work. 2. Action in terms of WHO programmes and activities that implement the five action areas of the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health. 3. Global commitments, including key documents, resolutions, and declarations that express the political commitment of WHO, its Member States, and the global community to the social determinants of health approach.