The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 5 million people die each year from trauma, injuries and violence, most of them in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Southeast Asia has one of the highest burdens of both trauma and injuries, and of related disabilities. In Vietnam, injuries, especially road traffic injuries (RTIs), are the fifth leading cause of premature death, and this issue has been forefront on the agenda of government agencies. But in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia, local capacity is lacking to conduct research on trauma and injuries to inform national policy and programmatic responses. The absence of comprehensive training programs in the science of trauma and injury prevention, and the social and economic impact within the larger public health sector in Vietnam, create a serious impediment to analytic work in this field. This proposal offers a plan to apply concerted action to reduce the growing burden of trauma and injuries. The proposed 2016-2021 Johns Hopkins University-Hanoi School of Public Health Trauma and Injury Research Program in Vietnam (JHU-Hanoi TrIP) will build on the existing work between JHU and HSPH. Through this proposed program, we hope to build on this work and that conducted by many of our colleagues at JHU with HSPH in the larger field of health research and public health in recent years. The overall goal of the Johns Hopkins University-Hanoi School of Public Health Trauma and Injury Research Program in Vietnam (JHU-Hanoi TrIP) is to strengthen research capacity on injury and trauma in Vietnam, as well as their long-term health, economic, and societal consequences through an innovative model of sustainable capacity development. Our approach will be based on close collaboration between two institutions ? Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHU), USA and Hanoi School of Public Health (HSPH), Vietnam ? each with a great commitment to understanding the public health impact of trauma and injuries, experience and expertise in research and a history of collaborative work. Our model will focus on using US expertise to strengthen the Vietnamese institution, promote a sustainable research enterprise focused on injuries and trauma and their consequences, leadership, national policy dialogue, and international linkages to Vietnam.
The proposed Johns Hopkins-Hanoi School of Public Health Trauma and Injury Research Program (JHU-Hanoi TrIP) will build capacity for injury research, leadership, national policy dialogue, and international linkages to Vietnam, a middle-income country in Southeast Asia where the burden of trauma, injury and disability is high. To promote a sustainable research and capacity development enterprise in this region and help to create a center of excellence for injury research at HSPH, we will develop a core group of researchers through a long-term training sequence for students in the Hanoi School of Public Health?s MPH degree program, and also offer short-term trainings such as workshops, online courses and webinars on key priority topics.
