Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Partnership (SHARP) for Mental Health Capacity Building - Admin Core

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ADMINISTRATIVE CORE – ABSTRACT SHARP sets forth an ambitious agenda to influence national mental health policy in Malawi and Tanzania through establishment and reinforcement of relationships, high-quality implementation science research, and capacity-building among researchers and policymakers. Such a complex undertaking involving multiple partners requires a strong administrative structure and dedicated personnel with clear roles and responsibilities in order to function effectively and achieve its objectives. The Admin Core will play a central role in achieving SHARP objectives. The Admin Core will oversee operation, coordination, management, and evaluation of the Scale-Up Study and Capacity-Building Cores as well as the SHARP partnership as a whole. The Admin Core will enhance the partnership effort by establishing effective communication platforms and shared decision-making structures, including a Steering Committee, an Executive Committee, and an External Advisory Board. The Admin core will develop and maintain shared, dedicated administrative infrastructure to ensure timely and accurate monitoring, reporting, and regulatory compliance of all SHARP activities, including creating a progress report structure, managing all communication with NIMH, and ensuring human subjects approval at all necessary institutions. Finally, the Admin Core will provide administrative support to strengthen existing and build new relationships between partners in Malawi, Tanzania and other sub-Saharan African countries, including co-organizing an annual mental health conference in Malawi, providing logistical support for Capacity-Building Core activities, and providing oversight for resource sharing plans to facilitate collaboration. To achieve these aims and support overall success of the consortium as a whole, the Admin Core will build on the strong, independent administrative unit at UNC Project-Malawi. This administrative unit has been the backbone of UNC Project-Malawi over the past 25 years. UNC Project-Malawi has a proven record of successfully administering US federal grants to support clinical care improvement and research activities in Malawi and engaging in the development of national health policy. By expanding and strengthening ties between the SHARP partners and streamlining and augmenting the available administrative resources for the scale-up study and capacity building activities in implementation science and mental health, the Admin Core will provide robust support to achieve overall SHARP goals.