Health-Professional Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI) - Kenya

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PROJECT SUMMARY Kenya continues to face a high burden of HIV despite thirty years of health sector and donor attention. To achieve and sustain HIV epidemic control, we propose to train a multidisciplinary workforce of doctors, nurses and pharmacists to design, conduct and disseminate research that can be readily moved from the field into policy and practice to inform HIV prevention, care and treatment. The Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy at the University of Nairobi, recipient of prior MEPI awards, propose to collaborate with partner medical, nursing and pharmacy schools at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenyatta University, and Maseno University to train both undergraduate and graduate students in team-based research methods, including implementation science and quality improvement. US partners, University of Washington and Stanford University, will contribute their expertise in implementation science training, interprofessional education and gender equality. The first aim will create a 1-year advanced research training certificate for talented graduate students in medicine, nursing, and pharmacy: students, with extensive mentoring support, will train in advanced research methods and will complete a research project at this seminal moment early in their careers. This will allow around 200 future leaders to finish their graduate medical, nursing and pharmacy studies experienced in research methods and implementation science. Our second aim will create a research elective at the undergraduate level for interprofessional teams of students in the 3 disciplines to spend 8 weeks in the field at a teaching hospital developing and completing a quality improvement project. The elective will introduce motivated students to research earlier than the current norm, and will disseminate advanced research methods, mentoring experiences, and team science to teaching facilities around Kenya, focusing on the affiliate clinical faculty in rural areas. Our third aim will institute interprofessional workshops and short courses at the teaching hospital level, involving not only clinical faculty but also county health officials, Ministry of Health (MOH) personnel, and the 4 academic institutions, strengthening leadership, quality of care, and evidence-based approaches while creating denser interprofessional networks. Qualified MOH and affiliate teaching faculty identified in this outreach will have the opportunity to complete the one-year research certificate, further involving field teaching sites in research approaches to public health problems. By integrating this training into both undergraduate and graduate level curricula, this program will be sustainable and expected to continue; this award will allow all 4 institutions to bring research into the undergraduate and graduate curricula for medicine, nursing and pharmacy, and will integrate county health officials, MOH, and affiliate teaching hospitals in research, quality improvement and implementation science to end HIV in Kenya.