The World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization (WHO/PAHO) and the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), in collaboration with the UWI’s Clinical Epidemiology Unit (UWI-CEU), will host “Planning for Success” - a four day training workshop in project management for 12 researchers and research administrators from  November 3 – 6,  2009.  The activities are in line with the recently approved PAHO Policy on Research for Health that promotes strengthening skills and capacities for the research for health workforce.

The WHO/TDR Initiative “Planning for Success” was established in 2003 to support skill-building for project management in health research in developing countries.  As part of the initial phase, WHO/TDR has developed and tested a training programme which includes two main components: a skill-building course for effective project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and a train-the trainer course to ensure availability of local trainers.

The workshop will enable researchers to clearly define projects, complete realistic project development plans, identify and support the expertise and responsibilities of team members as well as to create a communication plan to ensure successful collaborations. According to the organizers, the objective is to increase the researchers’ competitiveness for funding, facilitate successful implementation and monitoring of projects as well as to enable regular monitoring and accurate reporting at the end of the project period.

The Initiative promotes country-driven training and local ownership; its success thus depends on the level of leadership that institutions develop. Ten academic and research institutions from Africa have been contributing to the development and validation of the training programme. To date, more than 20 courses have been run and over 200 scientists from 19 different countries have been trained.

The UWI-CEU comprises the Epidemiology Research Unit (ERU) in the Tropical Medicine Research Institute (TMRI), UWI and colleagues from the Faculties of Medical Sciences and Social Sciences and the Centre for Gender and Development Studies of the UWI. Together, they have been admitted to the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) as a Clinical Epidemiology Unit (CEU) of the Canada/ USA International Clinical Epidemiology Network (CanUSACLEN) branch of INCLEN.  The launch of the UWI-CEU places the UWI among seven (7) regional networks and eighty-two (82) Clinical Epidemiology Units in twenty (24) countries. This will enhance opportunities for the Caribbean to advance the development of its human resources and increase capacity in health research and leadership training in the region.