Right from primary school, I liked science: understanding health research capacity building in sub-Saharan Africa through Kenyan training experiences

Abstract

Defining research career paths that enable Africans to address local and global health issues is essential for population health. This study was conducted to better understand how international health training programs contribute to human resource capacity building in health research. Research career motivations, decision-making and experiences were explored among a small group of Kenyan HIV/AIDS researchers who had completed an international training program. We found that intersecting social dynamics within specific geographic spaces influenced individual training decision-making and motivated research career decisions over time. The concept that 'geo-social motivation' is an important determinant of success for an African considering a research career developed from this study, and may be used to tailor future health research human resource capacity-building programs.

Supporting early career health investigators in Kenya: a qualitative study of complexity leadership for HIV/AIDS research capacity building

“…Here, complexity leadership theory considers how individuals within a research network, to include trainees, early career researchers and independent investigators, interact less through authority; rather, individuals lend their expertise to mentor in research training and career development, which allows for adaptation and creativity in these areas. Similarly, we found these characteristics of complexity leadership among AITRP fellows when we studied their motivations for an HIV/AIDS research career, and this leadership approach is increasingly emphasized within health professional training globally [9, 20]. We showed that Kenyan researchers who were motivated to conduct HIV/AIDS research assembled together professional and internship research experiences from high school through their undergraduate training in order to supplement the limitations in their research training at educational institutions.…”

A Systems Orientation to Research Capacity Development: A South African Perspective

“…Many research capacity development programmes are started to build evidence and expertise regarding research in areas of speciality in both the education and the clinical field. These are done to determine and advance research priorities in those speciality fields (Adewole et al 2014;Chu et al 2014;Daniels, Nduati, and Farquhar 2014;Wilkes, Cummings, and McKay 2013). We believe the novice research programme was uniquely positioned to fulfil both these roles.…”

Building Global Health Capacity at a Minority-Serving Institution in the Bronx: The Potential Role of PhotoVoice and the Geo-Social Pathway Framework in This Endeavor

“…18 These intersecting experiences generated their motivations to pursue their HIV clinical training and directly informed their research questions that developed from their communities' experiences with HIV that they wanted to address through their training and subsequent research. 19 Thus, the geo-social pathway framework begins with the concept of geo-social motivation. Although there are intrinsic and extrinsic academic motivation concepts (internal vs. external rewards), geo-social motivation is separate and potentially complementary to these other two concepts, but how each concept informs the other will not be discussed here.…”

“…20 Geo-social motivation for education and training is grounded in the individual's lived experience with health or social disparities, and this experience is shared across a community that live within a geographic space that is historically linked to that community. 19 Specifically, as outlined earlier, the Kenyan women pursued clinical HIV research training internationally in order to address local health issues, and they come from different parts of the country that represented different ethnic groups and levels of access to education. Similarly, in this article, the New York students at this MSI came from boroughs where specific racial and ethnic communities live and are exposed to different health and social disparities to include differential educational access.…”

“…The Geo-Social Pathway Framework developed out of research with Kenyan medical doctors and their motivations for HIV clinical research training and their career pathways afterward. 18 , 19 In that study, it was found that women’s motivation for an HIV clinical research career was grounded in the intersections of their lived experiences to include educational access, motherhood, geographic upbringing in Kenya that is linked to their ethnicity and cultural heritage, and their desire to address the impact of HIV on their own communities. 18 These intersecting experiences generated their motivations to pursue their HIV clinical training and directly informed their research questions that developed from their communities’ experiences with HIV that they wanted to address through their training and subsequent research.…”