Programmatic: Expanding Innovative Multidisciplinary Medical Education in Zambia

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Zambia is one of the countries in the world most heavily impacted by the HIV epidemic with an estimated adult prevalence of 14.3%. While recent indicators suggest progress in the national HIV prevention and management response, this is not sustainable without substantial increases in health manpower. Health care worker (HCW) training will require investments at many levels, starting with the expansion of the capacity and quality of pre-service training programs. The University of Zambia (UNZA) is the sole training institution in Zambia for Medical Officers and other health care professionals including bachelors degree programs in Nursing, Pharmacy, Biomedical Sciences, and Physiotherapy, Masters in Public Health and Nursing, and Masters in Medicine for clinical subspecialties. UNZA also has active affiliation agreements with the only Clinical Officer training program at Chainama College of Health Sciences and with other training institutions for nursing and HCW training institutions throughout Zambia. UNZA is thus critical for addressing the needs to expand HCW training in Zambia. Critical shortages of faculty and instructors must be addressed in order to meet these targets. The overall goal of this programmatic application is to strengthen both the quality and quantity of HCW education across selected high-priority training programs at UNZA and its partner institutions. Expanding and retaining faculty will be critical to these goals long-term. To accomplish this goal, our Specific Aims are: Specific Aim 1: Improve substantially the capacity of UNZA to train more HCWs at the UNZA School of Medicine (SOM) and affiliated institutions. Specific Aim 2: Improve the overall quality of HCW training, emphasizing integrated HIV specific training at UNZA. Specific Aim 3: Enhance the MMed degree program for physicians to ensure that graduates have the capacity to conduct evidence-based research and program evaluation. Specific Aim 4: Enhance the academic environment at UNZA to better retain faculty. PUBLIC HEATLH RELEVANCE: The people of sub-Saharan Africa are the most heavily affected by the HIV epidemic. The Zambian programmes for expansion of HIV therapy and prevention services has been very impressive but can only be sustained if more health care workers are trained. The single center for most advanced health care worker training in Zambia is the University of Zambia (UNZA). We propose to enhance the training programs at UNZA to improve the quality of training allowing for training many more HCW throughout Zambia.