The ESSENCE on health research funder collaboration has made important progress against a workplan and earlier recommendations that came out of a late 2015 evaluation.
ESSENCE members and guests at the meeting in Lusaka, Zambia
Credit: WHO/TDR/G. Aslanyan
The group is working to support stronger research management in low- and middle-income countries and two 2016 documents are supporting this area: Six practices to strengthen evaluation of Research for Development and Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for research capacity strengthening. An earlier evaluation of the initiative found that the best practice guidance documents have helped build a shared understanding and consensus among donors on elements of research capacity strengthening.
Members have also agreed to investigate how to support emerging issues such as increasing capacity for conducting implementation research and ways to measure the impact of global health research.
In 2017, the initiative will increase efforts for information sharing between members. They also agreed to set up a policy dialogue to identify common areas of work between ESSENCE and the Science Granting Councils Initiative in sub-Saharan Africa, which is funded by ESSENCE members DFID, IDRC and South African National Research Foundations.
New co-chairs and steering committee members have been elected. The following have two-year terms, 2016-18. Each member will lead a workstream or workgroup:
Linda Kupfer, Fogarty International Center/National
Institutes of Health, USA, Co-Chair
Hannah Akuffo, Sida, Sweden, Co-Chair
Simon Kay, Wellcome Trust, UK
Nadia Khelef, Institute Pasteur, France
Ian Askew, Special Programme of Research,
Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction, WHO, Switzerland
Ole Olesen, European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership, the Netherlands
Annica Wayman, USAID, USA
The group met during the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership Forum in Lusaka, Zambia in November.
For more information, contact Dr Garry Aslanyan, Manager, Partnerships and Governance.