Research Description
Collaborations between researchers in high and lower income countries are often a cornerstone of global health research. Power dynamics can shape if and how local researchers are included as decision makers on research projects as well as their access to grant funding, academic promotions and equitable authorship of manuscripts. Our work in this area has included documenting inequitable research practices, working with our universities promotion committees to define career trajectories in global health that value equitable partnerships, and developing capacity building programs to shift the locus of power in partnerships south.
Research Projects
Improving public health responses to emerging health threats: accelerating mathematical modeling development
Description: Methods development and training course to increase mathematical modeling to support pandemic response.
Core Member(s): Megan Murray, Bethany Hedt-Gauthier, Sylvia Ofori
Funder: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Funding Number: N/A
Power dynamics in global health research: the interplay between equitable collaborations and academic promotions
Description: We held a workshop that included 18 academics, researchers and administrators to consider how the academic promotion process could better support equitable collaborations between high- and lower-income countries. The seminar proceeding was published in the Lancet and is being further developed in collaboration with the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.
Core Member(s): Bethany Hedt-Gauthier, Megan Murray, Teena Cherian (former)
Funder: Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Funding Number: N/A
Bibliometric analysis of authorship to assess equity
Description: This project involved a series of bibliometric analyses to document trends in inclusion of authors from low- and high- income countries and by gender. In one of our first studies, we showed that the percent of African authors on health research from Africa has increased over the last decade, but that researchers from American institutions are considerably less likely to include African colleagues as authors.
Core Member(s): Bethany Hedt-Gauthier, Jackline Odhiambo (former)
Funder: N/A
Funding Number: N/A
Multilevel research capacity building program at PIH/Rwanda
Description: Over the past ten years, we have led a series of training activities in Rwanda with the goal of letting local researchers start at a level appropriate to their background and to “graduate” through additional opportunities as their interests/dedication developed. The specific activities included Introduction to Research Training, a 10-session course covering basic research topics and an Intermediate Operational Research Course offering three weeks of structured training focused on protocol development, data analysis, paper writing with intensive mentorship in-between. To date, 27 out of 28 papers developed in this training have been published.
Core Member(s): Bethany Hedt-Gauthier, Ann Miller, Jackline Odhiambo (former), Teena Cherian (former), Dale Barnhart (former)
Funder: Stephen Kahn (Abundance Foundation), Burke Fellowship
Funding Number: N/A