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KTNET Africa Project Holds Annual Partners’ Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

 Dr. Getnet Alemu presenting at the annual partners' meeting. 
 

The Knowledge Translation Network (KTNET) Africa project held its 2nd annual partners’ meeting from 27-29th January 2015 at Soramba Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting was attended by 28 participants that included principal investigators (PIs), co- principal investigators (Co-PIs), coalition contact persons from the eight NWO/WOTRO funded coalitions, representatives from NWO/WOTRO as well as members from the KTNET Africa Secretariat. The three days meeting was aimed at achieving the following objectives; 

  • Appraising each other (partners) of KT milestones (achievements) over the past one year
  • Refining and finalizing partner KT work plans for the next year (2015-2016)
  • Building strategic communication capacity for KT among researchers
  • Networking and identifying opportunities for collaboration including; joint session abstracts, submitting joint grant applications and
  • Sharing KT good practices among partners

In her opening remarks, Dr. Suzanne Kiwanuka, the PI for KTNET Africa welcomed the partners and commended them for the great work done and cooperation extended to the secretariat. “A year ago, operationalizing the idea of hosting a shared platform for knowledge translation across eight research coalitions seemed a daunting task. However, it gives me great pleasure to see us reconvene to update ourselves on what we have accomplished, exchange learning, share challenges and opportunities as well as devise strategies for future collaborations and networking” remarked the PI. She observed that given the parallel nature of interactions between researchers and research users, a lot needs to be done to support the translation of research results into policy and action.

The PI shared some of the project achievements and challenges since its inception in May 2013. These include; establishment of a functional project secretariat based at Makerere University School of Public Health, completion of partner stakeholder analyses and capacity assessment baseline surveys, creation of online platforms including a website and other social media platforms (LinkedIn, Research Gate, Facebook and Twitter), conducting capacity building sessions for coalition partners, providing technical and financial support to coalition partners, sharing learning through peer reviewed journal publications and blogs. She reiterated KTNET Africa’s commitment to supporting the uptake of the research evidence generated on health systems policy and practice among the various coalitions.

Following the opening remarks, meeting participants were updated on findings from the stakeholder analysis and capacity assessment surveys jointly undertaken by the secretariat and coalition contact persons. Each of the coalition partners then made a 10 minutes presentation in which they shared the progress updates with regard to their respective research projects. These focused on the policy relevant questions, key findings, milestones, challenges encountered and planned KT activities over the next year. The partners commended the KTNET for organizing such a session that enabled them to share and learn what was going on across other projects.

Day two was dedicated towards enhancing the KT capacity of the coalition partners. The sessions focused on revisiting systems thinking and its interaction with KT, implementation research, strategic communication and packaging evidence for policy makers and media.  Interactive in nature, these sessions equipped participants with practical skills on how to develop policy briefs and package key findings from their research using short videos. To strengthen, the networking component, the third day of the meeting was dedicated towards discussing potential networking opportunities. The sessions began with an update on the efforts and avenues used by KTNET to promote networking across the coalitions. These include; launching of the project website, authoring of blog articles, and activating various online discussion platforms such as Research Gate, Linked In, Twitter and Facebook, teleconferencing, organizing joint session presentations and annual partners meeting among others. Ms. Angela Kisakye also shared networking opportunities indentified by the secretariat including; upcoming conferences to which partners were invited to submit joint session abstracts, grant applications as well as the possibility of authoring a joint publication among others. Partners were later invited to provide feedback on how the networking initiatives could be improved and also brainstorm on how to seize the identified opportunities.

Partners were thrilled about the networking opportunities presented especially writing joint session abstracts, authoring a book on health financing and greatly appreciated the blogs as an excellent idea. However, they expressed concern about the limited amount of feedback/comments that come through on the blog articles posted. Various ways on how the blogs could be improved to attract more feedback were suggested including: changing the writing style- to entice/provoke readers the target audience to react, linking blogs to other international blog sites such as global public health. The PI however observed that given the volume of traffic on the site, it was evident that some people preferred to read but not to comment.

As the three days meeting came to a close, partners brainstormed and presented their joint abstract, grant application as well as book chapter ideas. Noting the budgetary limitations on the side of the secretariat, the PI urged partners to seize all the available funding opportunities. She also requested them to apply for available funding and attend the 4th Global Health Symposium in Vancouver Canada. KTNET in conjunction with NWO/WOTRO are exploring the possibility of holding a two days partners’ meeting prior to this symposium.  Moving forward, the KTNET secretariat will work with all partners to complete unfinished products including policy briefs, concretize video and book chapter ideas as well as finalize partners KT work plans that were discussed during the side meetings held at the end of each of the three days.

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