Grant: Planning Grants - Priority Announcement: International Research Collaborations

The activities proposed in this grant aim to bring together Canadian and international researchers to develop appropriate and feasible strategies for evaluating health research capacity development initiatives, with a particular focus on low-resourced settings. The overall objective of the research project is to 1) develop a conceptual framework for evaluating health research capacity development relevant globally; 2) synthesize appropriate mixed method approaches to such evaluation; and 3) develop protocols for applying evaluation strategies of existing health research capacity development programs. We will have monthly teleconferences and ongoing email correspondences throughout the 4 months. One face-to-face meeting will be held in Liverpool, UK to finalize the discussions the capacity development fundamentals and frameworks, evaluation frameworks, and methods for applying the evaluation frameworks to case studies of capacity development initiatives. The initiatives that we are interested in including in the proposed activities include the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), Malaria Capacity Development Consortium (MCDC), the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research Summer Institutes (CCGHR-SIs), and Addiction and Mental Health Capacity Building/Drug Research Capacity Building (CICAD - to be confirmed). At the end of the 4 months for which we are seeking funding, we will be able to implement the evaluation of health research capacity development initiatives. We also expect to have a review of the evidence to identify tools to evaluate capacity development in health systems and policy research and knowledge translation and exchange, which we will disseminate through scientific publication, brief reports and presentations. We will also develop a community of practice to allow sharing of knowledge between our collaborators and other colleagues involved in the field.