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An
International
Network of field sites with continuous Demographic |
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INDEPTH Cross-Site Capacity Development Grants Programme
Background
The rapid health transition going on in many middle-income countries, e.g. Indonesia, South Africa and others, and rapidly approaching the low-income countries is associated with well-known characteristics such as changing demographic structures, high migration, heavy commercial exposures to well established, and preventable, risk factors and western lifestyles. This calls for emperically based and valid risk factor surveillance systems assessing and potentially providing a basis for interventions along with their policy implications.
The urgency of recognising research and capacity needs has been articulated strongly by international organisations such as WHO, Sida/SAREC, COHRED, and the Global Forum. Constraints to progress, however, usually include institutional inertia and weak capacity. The availability of the INDEPTH Network with on-going demographic surveillance in currently 37 sites in 19 countries in Africa, Asia, Central America and Oceania provides a unique infrastructure for multi-site/country collaborations, community-based research training, and institutional capacity building.
A key approach towards meeting the above demands is thus the fostering of individual research training, institutional capacity building in low- and middle-income countries and international collaboration and networking. Specifically there is need to support young scientists in developing countries to: develop and deploy new methodologies in demographic surveillance; conduct comparative cross-cultural south-south studies; and create platforms for community interventions.
Objectives The overall goal of this new INDEPTH programme is to foster research collaboration and research training between INDEPTH sites in the developing world by providing seed grants of US$25,000 per grant to at least three member sites participating in a cross-site activity. This programme has been initially funded by Sida/SAREC. The Secretariat hopes to attract other funding agencies in the near future.
The seed grants are intended to facilitate stronger collaborations among INDEPTH sites. Specifically the objectives which are intentionally broad are to:
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