Annual Progress Reports 2015

Annual Progress Reports 2015

INDEPTH in 2015 further strengthened effective data management systems and harmonised data across member centres alongside the training of a new generation of data managers and scientists. Among the key accomplishments during the year was the constitution the Capacity Strengthening and Training Strategic Group that will regularly discuss and advice on capacity strengthening and training issues of the Network. The first meeting of the Group was held 17- 19 August 2015 in Accra.

 th The 13^th  INDEPTH Scientific Conference (ISC 2015) was successfully held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 11-13 November 2015. The three-day conference was on the theme “Health and Demographic Research to inform the Post 2015 Development Agenda”. Attendance at the conference was impressive with 279 participants from 25 countries and 4 continents with over 100 oral presentations were delivered in parallel and plenary sessions through a diversity of topics.

As part of the efforts to harmonise and standard data collection and improve quality as well as the turnaround time from data collection, processing and cleaning to availability for analysis, we effectively embarked on assisting member centres to migrate from paper to electronic data capture using the OpenHDS platform. One centre completed the migration process and started full electronic data capture using OpenHDS while 5 member HDSSs in Ethiopia completed an intensive training to kick start the switch to the OpenHDS platiorm.

In keeping with the initial pledge, the INDEPTH Data Repository was effectively updated with new data on  1^st  July 2015 bringing the total to 20 HDSS datasets on the repository and INDEPTHStats updated to a total to 31 HDSSs covering 15 countries. Moreover, this Data Repository has now gained recognition by PLOS-ONE, a reputable international academic journal, as an approved repository to lodge publication datasets.

We will continue the efforts to address these challenges in 2016 through soliciting for more dedicated funds to cover training activities. We will also continue to engage other university partners for joint efforts to foster this objective as well as embedding some elements of training into the various funded projects.

 During the year, our team together with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Save the Children Foundation and Makerere University drafted a proposal to Children Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) on the Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) Project which was funded. The project will receive £802,079 for 60 months starting from January 2016.