Establishing an MSc in Global Health Ethics at the University of Cape Town

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Project Summary In this project, we propose to establish a two-year MSc in Global Health Ethics degree at the University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences (UCT FHS), as well as to formalize the research ethics training curriculum at that Faculty. Through a focus on decolonization of ethics scholarship and from the perspective of the African humanities, we propose to revolutionise ethics teaching in African health research by foregrounding African experiences, needs and worldviews to equip our students to interrogate health research ethics drawing on the latest thinking in the African humanities anchored into the need to decolonise global health and global health ethics. Through the programme we sensitise our students the historical, social and political factors that influence the shape and organisation of global health research, and the manifestation of particular ethical challenges in it. We will combine foundational courses in African humanities with advanced courses in six domains of frontier scientific research taking place in Africa – namely AI, Neuroscience, Genomics, Humanitarian Research, Research in Children, and Open Science. The aim is to graduate students that are able to critically engage with these frontier scientific developments in a way that reflects the ontologies, experiences and needs of Africans. Over the course of this program, we will graduate at least 15 MSc students, 6 of whom will be fully funded and 9 of whom will be partly funded by program resources. We will also make available some of our course content as short courses. Over the course of the program, we will offer 16 short research ethics courses to a minimum of 320 individuals. We will also conduct a meticulous assessment of current ad hoc ethics training initiatives in the UCT FHS, analyze support needs and monitor the quality of ongoing efforts. Drawing on the results of this assessment, we will design and implement a formalized curriculum for research ethics training in the FHS which will include extensive mentorship for those currently offering ethics training across the FHS departments and divisions. Finally we will work to increase the visibility of ethics in the FHS and show UCT FHS staff and students that ethics is exciting and relevant to the plethora of medical research ongoing in the FHS. We will do so by organizing regular events in the FHS that speak to a topic in research ethics, ranging from regular discussion forums drawing on popular forms of media (such as podcasts, videos or newspaper articles) to introduce people to pertinent topics in ethics, to more formal monthly presentations, ‘ask anything’ ethics quickfix events and special events with diverse guest speakers from anywhere in the world. Participation in this enrichment program will be mandatory for our MSc trainees.