Building capacity for public and population health research in Africa: the consortium for advanced research training in Africa (CARTA) model

Abstract

BackgroundGlobally, sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden of disease. Strengthened research capacity to understand the social determinants of health among different African populations is key to addressing the drivers of poor health and developing interventions to improve health outcomes and health systems in the region. Yet, the continent clearly lacks centers of research excellence that can generate a strong evidence base to address the region's socio-economic and health problems.Objective and program overviewWe describe the recently launched Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), which brings together a network of nine academic and four research institutions from West, East, Central, and Southern Africa, and select northern universities and training institutes. CARTA's program of activities comprises two primary, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing objectives: to strengthen research infrastructure and capacity at African universities; and to support doctoral training through the creation of a collaborative doctoral training program in population and public health. The ultimate goal of CARTA is to build local research capacity to understand the determinants of population health and effectively intervene to improve health outcomes and health systems.ConclusionsCARTA's focus on the local production of networked and high-skilled researchers committed to working in sub-Saharan Africa, and on the concomitant increase in local research and training capacity of African universities and research institutes addresses the inability of existing programs to create a critical mass of well-trained and networked researchers across the continent. The initiative's goal of strengthening human resources and university-wide systems critical to the success and sustainability of research productivity in public and population health will rejuvenate institutional teaching, research, and administrative systems.

Strengthening expertise for health technology assessment and priority-setting in Africa

“…In these countries, training programmes included short courses and workshops as well as Master’s and PhD degrees. PhD training is critical to provide the advanced skills required to conduct complex research and lead research teams [25], which are often requirements for advanced HTAs.…”

“…Nonetheless, informal exchanges with overseas partners remain very useful. A novel initiative focussed on the specific needs of advanced PhD training in Africa, and which is based in Africa and allows collaboration and learning across countries, is the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) programme [25]. …”

Closing the barrier between disease and health outcomes in Africa through research and capacity development

“…The aim of CARTA is to strengthen research infrastructure and train future academics in Africa through the training of PhD candidates and their supervisors. This would enable the researchers to work in multidisciplinary health research environments in the future [7,21]. CARTA funds the training of these individuals and provides workshops for administrators of the contributing institutions.…”

“…Most importantly, he proposed that ‘[b]uilding research capacity in the South is too important to be left to chance’ [2]. The CARTA programme (see below) has been one such programme which has focussed on training health sciences researchers in Africa for the future and has ensured that the training of these young scientists would make them globally competitive [7,21]. …”

“…While training programmes, seed grants, mentorship programmes and partnerships have been established in Africa [6], these interventions have failed to ‘create a critical mass of well-trained and networked researchers across the continent [or] to increase research productivity’ [7]. …”