Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39819580›Full record

ArticleGlobal health, science and practice2025

Building Public Health Quantitative Methods Capacity and Networks in sub-Saharan Africa: An Evaluation of a Faculty Training Program.

Oleosi Ntshebe, Sarah Anoke, Jesca M Batidzirai, Chris Guure, Beatrice Muganda, Marcello Pagano, Muhammed Semakula, Elysia Larson

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Article in Global health, science and practice, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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1citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Oleosi NtshebeDepartment of Population Studies, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana.
Sarah AnokeDepartment of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Jesca M BatidziraiSchool of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
Chris GuureDepartment of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
Beatrice MugandaPartnership for African Social and Governance Research, Nairobi, Kenya.
Marcello PaganoDepartment of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Muhammed SemakulaRwanda Biomedical Center, Research Innovation and Data Science Division, Kigali, Rwanda.
Elysia LarsonDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA. elarson@bidmc.harvard.edu.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

introductionThere is a shortage of individuals trained in using quantitative methods in biomedical research in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Improving public health in SSA requires new ways to promote quantitative knowledge and skills among faculty in biomedical research and better-integrated network systems of support.

methodsWe describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of an innovative faculty training and support program in SSA from December 2017-June 2020, using courses in monitoring and evaluation, data management, and complex surveys as prototypical examples. Indicators were selected to follow the 4 levels outlined in the Kirkpatrick evaluation model: reaction, learning, behavior, and results. We used survey data from faculty fellows and students and reported median change and interquartile ranges (IQR).

resultsThe training program created an international community of 26 faculty members working collaboratively to lead the training of 3 quantitative methods courses. The program increased faculty members' knowledge of the course content (median increase 17 percentage points [IQR: 0, 20]). Faculty members, in turn, trained 380 students at institutions of higher education in 8 SSA countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda).

conclusionThe program relied on collaborative funding from participating institutions and focused on individual capacity-strengthening. In the future, the program will be scaled to include other emerging areas, such as data science, will integrate institutional support and feedback, and will move some of the training and mentoring activities to an online platform. Finally, to ensure that faculty have both improved confidence and improvement in competence, in future iterations, the program will include competency evaluation at the start and end and pair fellows who need additional training with those who excelled to co-teach.

Indexed as

Biomedical ResearchCapacity BuildingFacultyPublic HealthAfrica South of the SaharaHumansProgram EvaluationSurveys and Questionnaires

Identifiers

PMID39819580
PMCPMC12352941

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.