An International network of DSS sites involved in demographic and health research in developing countries
News Bulletin April 2008
Vol. 2008, 1 (April 2008)
In this edition:
INDEPTH goes online with AGM Registration and Abstract Submission
INDEPTH Prize for Extraordinary Research in Population and Health
Demographic and Epidemiological Transitions
Fertility Monograph in High Gear!
2nd Edition of Mortality Monograph
INDEPTH at the University of Southampton, UK
INDEPTH at Measure DHS at Macro International in Maryland, USA
INDEPTH at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Seattle, Washington
INDEPTH Adult Health and Aging Working Group meets in Umea, Sweden
INDEPTH Education Interest Group meets in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
INDEPTH goes online with AGM Registration and Abstract Submission
INDEPTH has taken its AGM to the next level by moving from manual registration of participants and submission of abstracts to online submissions and registration. This move is in keeping with the Secretariat’s desire to make the process much more interactive and to ensure efficiency and transparency. In the past, members have complained of submitting abstracts without any acknowledgement. With online registration, acknowledgement is instant because a message will be displayed indicating that your submission has been received and an email message sent to you subsequently. Registration is currently open so you are encouraged to visit the INDEPTH AGM page http://www.indepth-network.org/events/8agm/8agm_1stcall.htm. Registration and submission of abstracts can only be done online.
INDEPTH Prize for Extraordinary Research in Population and Health
The INDEPTH Prize for Extraordinary Research in Population and Health at INDEPTH Sites was established by the Board of Trustees of the INDEPTH Network in March 2002. The Prize fund of $10000 was donated to the INDEPTH Network by Dr. Peter Aaby, leader of the Bandim HDSS site in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. The objective of the Prize is to stimulate researchers at INDEPTH member sites to undertake innovative work leading to extraordinary results that have the potential to impact policy and practice. An announcement for nominations for the prize is out and posted online at our website. Visit the INDEPTH website at http://www.indepth-network.org/ and send in your nominations for this prestigious prize.
Under the HDSS-Universities collaboration, the INDEPTH Secretariat has introduced an INDEPTH Fellowships Programme. The fellowship programme seeks to identify young, bright and promising recently graduated MSc/MA students from participating population programmes involved in the HDSS-Universities collaboration. They will be posted to participating HDSS sites as resident fellows for a maximum of one year. The fellows will have a defined scope of work to be jointly determined by the collaborating partners. This programme is currently restricted to the Hewlett funded programmes in Kenya, Ghana and South Africa. For more information check our website at http://www.indepth-network.org/. HDSS sites in Ghana, South Africa and Kenya interested in receiving fellows should contact the Secretariat.
The ART-rollout grant proposal the Network has been developing over the last
two years received a great boost when experts and researchers from the
participating sites met in Accra to work on the proposal.
The
workshop took place from March 15-18, 2008. The project aims to assess the
impact of the scale-up of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) on individuals,
populations and health systems. Five HDSS sites are participating in the
study and are led by Dr. Nyovani Madise from the University of Southampton,
UK, formerly with the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC)
in Nairobi. The five sites are Agincourt (South Africa), Bandim
(Guinea-Bissau), Ifakara (Tanzania), Kisumu and Nairobi (Kenya).
Demographic and Epidemiological Transitions
The shift from high to low levels of mortality and fertility now famously called the demographic transition, occurred over a century ago in the developed world. The transition, it is argued, starts with a drop in mortality rates to be followed later by fertility rates. The decline in both mortality and fertility in the developed countries of Europe and North America has been attributed to an increase in socioeconomic development and its resulting spin-offs. Associated with the demographic transition is the epidemiological transition. Encouraged by IDRC, Canada, INDEPTH plans to develop a proposal that will examine the demographic and epidemiological transitions in developing countries. The Secretariat is in dialogue with the Adult Health Working Group to see if it can lead this new study. Stay tuned for further developments.
Very often, data managers are confined to the strong and highly secured computer rooms at their various institutions. This time, the INDEPTH Secretariat is bringing data managers to Ghana from 20 member sites to share experiences, deliberate on data management challenges, strategise on ways of improving data quality and learn some of the basic demographic concepts they often confront when they run their rates programmes for the demographers and other researchers at the sites. The workshop is planned to take place in Ghana, at the Dodowa Health Research Centre, from May 18-23, 2008. The workshop will be facilitated by computer scientists and demographers. Site leaders are encouraged to ensure that their data managers bring along the minimum datasets requested by the Secretariat. This is also an opportunity for sites to contribute to the 2nd edition of the INDEPTH mortality monograph.
In collaboration with the University of Greisfeld in Germany, INDEPTH is embarking on a project on cost of illness at INDEPTH sites. Twelve sites across the entire network are participating in this project. The sites have planned a workshop in Nouna, Burkina Faso, from June 2-4, to review, refine and finalise a grant proposal under the leadership of Prof. N.T.K. Chuc of the Filabavi HDSS site in Vietnam.
Fertility Monograph in High Gear!
With 27 sites signing on to contribute data and participate in the production of a fertility monograph, a high powered editorial team was constituted to lead this effort. Led by Dr. Jean-Christophe Fotso of APHRC (Nairobi Urban HDSS), Dr. William Muhwawa of Africa Centre in South Africa, Dr. Abdur Razzaque of Matlab in Bangladesh and Prof. Clifford Odimegwu of Wits University/Agincourt HDSS in South Africa, the team soon set to work. Templates for site-specific chapters and general chapters were developed and participating sites are now working to meet deadlines. The group aims to have a draft monograph ready by the next AGM in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Please support them by contributing your part.
2nd Edition of Mortality Monograph
Although it got off to a slow start, the 2nd edition of the mortality monograph is gaining momentum with the contribution of close to 20 datasets from INDEPTH sites. Some of the editorial team members met a few times and started interrogating the data. At the Union of African Population Studies (UAPS) conference in Arusha, Tanzania, datasets received were converted into a common format. Subsequently, some preliminary analysis has been run and clear patterns are emerging. Four out of the five editorial team members who are attending the annual meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA) in New Orleans from April 17-19, have agreed to arrive three days ahead of the start of the meeting to do further analysis. We want to take this opportunity to urge those sites that have not yet submitted their data to do so before it is too late. The deadline for submission is 30 May 2008.
To help us better characterize our member sites and be in a position to quickly determine which sites can do what work when opportunities arise, the INDEPTH Secretariat, in consultation with site leaders at the Nairobi AGM agreed that sites provide some minimum datasets to the Secretariat. Subsequently, the Secretariat provided a template for the minimum datasets. Sites are once again reminded through this medium to submit the minimum datasets to the Secretariat.
The Secretariat hosted several visitors who wanted to know about our activities and discuss avenues for collaboration. We were delighted to welcome professors from Columbia University and Michigan State University in the US. We hosted The African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) and African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN), and the African Development Bank came to us to present the Bank’s activities so that INDEPTH can understand their operations and look at ways to access support from the Bank for Network activities.
INDEPTH at the University of Southampton, UK
The Executive Director, Dr. Osman Sankoh was hosted by the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute (S3RI) on 28 March 2008 where he made a presentation on INDEPTH. Dr. Sankoh is pursuing avenues for collaboration with S3RI to strengthen analytic capacities (demographic and biostatistical) at INDEPTH sites.
INDEPTH at Measure DHS at Macro International in Maryland, USA
Measure DHS is a major part of the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) initiatives to help developing countries collect and use data to monitor and evaluate population, health, and nutrition programmes. Over the years, their Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) activities have expanded to include emerging issues such as reproductive health, children’s vaccination programs, and HIV/AIDS. They also have broadened DHS’s geographic horizons and incorporated new methods and technology. INDEPTH is visiting Measure DHS in Maryland on April 15 to pursue avenues for collaboration in the areas of data collection and public accessibility to those data. Osman, who leads the INDEPTH team, will be accompanied by a team of experts from INDEPTH sites. These are: Dr. Kobus Herbst at the Africa Centre in South Africa (who leads the INDEPTH Data System initiative), Dr. Sanjay Juvekar at the Vadu HDSS site in India (who leads the INDEPTH data sharing initiative in Asia) and Prof. Tathagatha of the International Institute of Information Technology, a member of the INDEPTH Scientific Advisory Committee. Dr. Ann Way, Dr. Alfred Fort and several other colleagues at Macro International are set to receive the INDEPTH team and to share their experiences.
INDEPTH at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Seattle, Washington
The mission of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington is to monitor global health conditions and health systems, as well as to evaluate interventions, initiatives, and reforms. The Institute will provide high quality and timely information on health so that policymakers, researchers, donors, practitioners, local decision-makers, and others can better allocate limited resources to achieve optimal results. INDEPTH will participate at the public launch of IHME in Seattle in early April. Joining Dr. Sankoh are Dr. Ayaga Bawah (Senior Research Associate at INDEPTH), Dr. Sam Clark (Assistant Professor at the University of Washington) and Prof. Steve Tollman (Agincourt HDSS/Wits University, Johannesburg) in a dialogue on avenues for collaboration with Prof. Chris Murray, IHME Director.
INDEPTH Adult Health and Aging Working Group meets in Umea, Sweden
The Adult Health and Aging Working Group is advanced in preparations for a data analysis workshop planned for the last week of May in Umea, Sweden. The workshop will bring scientists from the eight sites that were involved in deploying the WHO-SAGE questionnaire. They will work with experts and collaborators from Umea University, WHO and the National Institute of Ageing (NIA), USA, to analyse the data. Over the past six months, some of the scientists from the sites and their collaborators have been engaged in developing analyses methodologies for analysing the data.
INDEPTH Education Interest Group meets in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
The Working Group on education is set to organize analysis workshop in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, from July 8-11, 2008. Led by Dr. Jean-Francois Kobiane of ISSP and Ouagadougou HDSS, a template has been circulated to sites that have indicated interest to complete. About 15 HDSS sites are participating in this project. The Secretariat is excited about this development there has long been a great interest within the network in conducting research on educational outcomes.