Infectious Disease in East Africa: A Behavioral and Economic Research Collaborative (IDEA-BERC)

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Project Summary While technological innovation has traditionally been considered essential in the fight against infectious diseases, recent outbreaks of the Ebola and Zika viruses have revealed a compelling need to integrate insights from social science to help control potential epidemics and pandemics. It is essential to understand how clinicians, patients, and communities make economic and social decisions about health care and infectious disease risk—particularly in the context of poverty, which significantly affects human decision-making. To address these challenges, the Infectious Disease in East Africa: A Behavioral and Economic Research Collaborative (IDEA-BERC) will offer rigorous, regionally-tailored training in implementation research applied to infectious disease challenges. The 5-year program includes medium-term training for 12-15 doctoral and post-doctoral East African researchers, who will be equipped— through coursework, mentored field research, and curriculum development— to address the social, behavioral, and economic dimensions of infectious disease. Trainees' research projects will focus on one of 4 themes (i.e. health incentives, information, pricing, and service delivery) applied across a range of topics, from diarrheal diseases and helminth infections, to malaria and sexually transmitted infections. Trainees will subsequently return to their home nations to conduct research under ongoing mentorship by UC Berkeley faculty and East African peer mentors. They will join a tight network of peer researchers at IDEA-BERC's three partner East African research institutions: the African Population Health Research Center, University of Nairobi and the University of Rwanda--all of which are eager to develop capacity in this promising interdisciplinary area. As part of IDEA-BERC, these partners will carry out at least 8 short-term trainings related to implementation science, reaching more than 200 participants, and focused on complementary research skills like Grant Writing, Big Data, and Literature Reviews as they relate to implementation research. Unique to the program are its rigorous standards across a range of quantitative and qualitative social sciences—focusing not only on observational research and model development (areas in which many East African researchers already excel), but on scientific evaluation of interventions to improve infectious disease- related behaviors. In the long term, IDEA-BERC will create a robust regional network of investigators and institutions with the technical capacity and research infrastructure to inform the design of government and multi-lateral infectious disease control efforts. Regional capacity will be further built via focused investments in South-South networking and convening opportunities, including an annual regional conference and mini-grants to promote the teaching of implementation research methods. These activities will ensure that the trainees develop into a sustainable scientific community, with greater sustainability—and public health impact—than any investigator or institution can achieve in isolation.