Mozambique has enormous potential to conduct biomedical research, given its high rates of infectious diseases and recent international investments in its health care infrastructure and HIV care and treatment scale-up. In order to improve health service delivery and its contribution to medical advancements, Mozambique has a pressing need to further grow its pool of qualified health professionals with the requisite methodological skills in implementation science focused on HIV/AIDS. Aligned with the goals of the Fogarty HIV Research Training Program for Low-and Middle-Income Country (LMIC) Institutions, we have designed a comprehensive training program that is built upon the foundations laid by our joint University Eduardo Mondlane (UEM)-Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) efforts to date and introduces a new partner, Federal University of So Paulo (UNIFESP). VIGH faculty members have worked intensively with UEM and Government of Mozambique Ministry of Health (Ministrio de Sade [MISAU]) partners since 2007 to train Mozambican research scientists at both UEM and Vanderbilt University (VU), and to launch high-impact public health interventions linked to the VIGH-led PEPFAR HIV scale-up program in Zambzia Province. Vanderbilt and UEM faculty or alumni have co-authored 41 manuscripts in the HIV/AIDS field since 2009. We expect to help raise UEM-led implementation science research and training substantially in productivity, quality, and sustainability through the proposed UEM- Partnership for Research in Implementation Science, Mozambique (PRISM). Our focus will be to further bolster the existing MPH program at UEM and its faculty using both VU-based Masters of Public Health (MPH) and UNIFESP-based Masters of Science (MSc) degrees; as well as UEM faculty development fellowships at VU.
Our Specific Aims are to 1) Strengthen and expand the UEM faculty pool in HIV/AIDS implementation science research, 2) Enhance research capacity at the UEM Faculty of Medicine with a focus on HIV/AIDS implementation science research targeting quality improvement/health services research, 3) Nurture innovative mentored research by PRISM trainees/alumni to address HIV care and treatment scale-up via Career Bridging project opportunities and career development mentoring PRISM will represent the first major investment in UEM graduate medical education and will be complementary to the current Mozambique Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI, with UCSD) that focuses on post- graduate clinical training. We describe our strong partnership with PEPFAR in Mozambique and the links we have with other NIH/FIC training programs. We further highlight our rationale for the training partners, our successes in past training through 19 years of our AITRP program history, and our success in leveraging training funds for securing substantial research resources for our graduates.
The University Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) in partnership with Federal University of So Paulo (UNIFESP) propose to train a new generation of Mozambican researchers with a focus on HIV/AIDS implementation science, taking full advantage of the our extramurally- funded research program in Mozambique. PRISM will assist UEM to capacitate both current and future faculty to teach and conduct HIV-focused implementation science research.
