Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative

BACKGROUND: African medical schools have historically turned to northern partners for technical assistance and resources to strengthen their education and research programmes. In 2010, this paradigm shifted when the United States Government brought forward unprecedented resources to support African...

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Autores principales: Talib, Zohray M, Kiguli-Malwadde, Elsie, Wohltjen, Hannah, Derbew, Miliard, Mulla, Yakub, Olaleye, David, Sewankambo, Nelson
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4355474/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25588887
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-4491-13-1
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author Talib, Zohray M
Kiguli-Malwadde, Elsie
Wohltjen, Hannah
Derbew, Miliard
Mulla, Yakub
Olaleye, David
Sewankambo, Nelson
author_facet Talib, Zohray M
Kiguli-Malwadde, Elsie
Wohltjen, Hannah
Derbew, Miliard
Mulla, Yakub
Olaleye, David
Sewankambo, Nelson
author_sort Talib, Zohray M
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: African medical schools have historically turned to northern partners for technical assistance and resources to strengthen their education and research programmes. In 2010, this paradigm shifted when the United States Government brought forward unprecedented resources to support African medical schools. The grant, entitled the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) triggered a number of south-south collaborations between medical schools in Africa. This paper examines the goals of these partnerships and their impact on medical education and health workforce planning. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the Principal Investigators of the first four MEPI programmes that formed an in-country consortium. These interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded to identify common themes. RESULTS: All of the consortia have prioritized efforts to increase the quality of medical education, support new schools in-country and strengthen relations with government. These in-country partnerships have enabled schools to pool and mobilize limited resources creatively and generate locally-relevant curricula based on best-practices. The established schools are helping new schools by training faculty and using grant funds to purchase learning materials for their students. The consortia have strengthened the dialogue between academia and policy-makers enabling evidence-based health workforce planning. All of the partnerships are expected to last well beyond the MEPI grant as a result of local ownership and institutionalization of collaborative activities. CONCLUSIONS: The consortia described in this paper demonstrate a paradigm shift in the relationship between medical schools in four African countries. While schools in Africa have historically worked in silos, competing for limited resources, MEPI funding that was leveraged to form in-country partnerships has created a culture of collaboration, overriding the history of competition. The positive impact on the quality and efficiency of health workforce training suggests that future funding for global health education should prioritize such south-south collaborations.
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spelling pubmed-43554742015-03-12 Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative Talib, Zohray M Kiguli-Malwadde, Elsie Wohltjen, Hannah Derbew, Miliard Mulla, Yakub Olaleye, David Sewankambo, Nelson Hum Resour Health Research BACKGROUND: African medical schools have historically turned to northern partners for technical assistance and resources to strengthen their education and research programmes. In 2010, this paradigm shifted when the United States Government brought forward unprecedented resources to support African medical schools. The grant, entitled the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) triggered a number of south-south collaborations between medical schools in Africa. This paper examines the goals of these partnerships and their impact on medical education and health workforce planning. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the Principal Investigators of the first four MEPI programmes that formed an in-country consortium. These interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded to identify common themes. RESULTS: All of the consortia have prioritized efforts to increase the quality of medical education, support new schools in-country and strengthen relations with government. These in-country partnerships have enabled schools to pool and mobilize limited resources creatively and generate locally-relevant curricula based on best-practices. The established schools are helping new schools by training faculty and using grant funds to purchase learning materials for their students. The consortia have strengthened the dialogue between academia and policy-makers enabling evidence-based health workforce planning. All of the partnerships are expected to last well beyond the MEPI grant as a result of local ownership and institutionalization of collaborative activities. CONCLUSIONS: The consortia described in this paper demonstrate a paradigm shift in the relationship between medical schools in four African countries. While schools in Africa have historically worked in silos, competing for limited resources, MEPI funding that was leveraged to form in-country partnerships has created a culture of collaboration, overriding the history of competition. The positive impact on the quality and efficiency of health workforce training suggests that future funding for global health education should prioritize such south-south collaborations. BioMed Central 2015-01-14 /pmc/articles/PMC4355474/ /pubmed/25588887 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-4491-13-1 Text en © Talib et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Talib, Zohray M
Kiguli-Malwadde, Elsie
Wohltjen, Hannah
Derbew, Miliard
Mulla, Yakub
Olaleye, David
Sewankambo, Nelson
Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative
title Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative
title_full Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative
title_fullStr Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative
title_full_unstemmed Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative
title_short Transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among African medical schools catalyzed by the Medical Education Partnership Initiative
title_sort transforming health professions’ education through in-country collaboration: examining the consortia among african medical schools catalyzed by the medical education partnership initiative
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4355474/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25588887
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-4491-13-1
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