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Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers

BACKGROUND: Sustainability of research culture in Sub-Saharan Africa is threatened in part by the lack of a critical mass of young researchers with the requisite skills and interest to undertake research careers. This paper describes an intensive mentorship programme combining hierarchical (vertical...

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Autores principales: Balandya, Emmanuel, Sunguya, Bruno, Gunda, Daniel W., Kidenya, Benson, Nyamhanga, Tumaini, Minja, Irene K., Mahande, Michael, Mmbaga, Blandina T., Mshana, Stephen E., Mteta, Kien, Bartlett, John, Lyamuya, Eligius
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967782/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33731103
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02611-0
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author Balandya, Emmanuel
Sunguya, Bruno
Gunda, Daniel W.
Kidenya, Benson
Nyamhanga, Tumaini
Minja, Irene K.
Mahande, Michael
Mmbaga, Blandina T.
Mshana, Stephen E.
Mteta, Kien
Bartlett, John
Lyamuya, Eligius
author_facet Balandya, Emmanuel
Sunguya, Bruno
Gunda, Daniel W.
Kidenya, Benson
Nyamhanga, Tumaini
Minja, Irene K.
Mahande, Michael
Mmbaga, Blandina T.
Mshana, Stephen E.
Mteta, Kien
Bartlett, John
Lyamuya, Eligius
author_sort Balandya, Emmanuel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Sustainability of research culture in Sub-Saharan Africa is threatened in part by the lack of a critical mass of young researchers with the requisite skills and interest to undertake research careers. This paper describes an intensive mentorship programme combining hierarchical (vertical) and peer-to-peer (horizontal) mentoring strategies among young researchers in a resource limited setting in Sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: A consortium of three partnering large Tanzanian health training institutions (MUHAS, CUHAS and KCMUCo) and two collaborating US institutions (UCSF and Duke University) was formed as part of the five-year Transforming Health Professions Education in Tanzania (THET) project, funded by the NIH through Health Professional Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI). Within THET, the Community of Young Research Peers (CYRP) was formed, comprising of inter-professional and cross-institutional team of 12 Master-level Young Research Peers and 10 co-opted fellows from the former MEPI-Junior Faculty (MEPI-JF) project. The Young Peers received mentorship from senior researchers from the consortium through mentored research awards and research training, and in turn provided reciprocal peer-to-peer mentorship as well as mentorship to undergraduate students. RESULTS: At the end of the first 2 years of the project, all 12 Young Peers were proceeding well with mentored research awards, and some were at more advanced stages. For example, three articles were already published in peer reviewed journals and two other manuscripts were in final stages of preparation. All 12 Young Peers participated in CYRP-wide thematic training workshops on mentoring and secondary data analysis; 11 had undertaken at least three research training short courses in identified areas of need; 9 joined at least one other ongoing research project; 5 made at least one scientific presentation, and 5 participated in at least one submitted grant application. Half of the Young Peers have enrolled in PhD programmes. A collective total of 41 undergraduate students were actively mentored by the Young Peers in research. CONCLUSION: The CYRP has demonstrated to be an effective model for dual vertical and horizontal mentorship in research to young investigators in resource-limited settings. This model is recommended to educators working on developing research competence of early career researchers, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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spelling pubmed-79677822021-03-17 Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers Balandya, Emmanuel Sunguya, Bruno Gunda, Daniel W. Kidenya, Benson Nyamhanga, Tumaini Minja, Irene K. Mahande, Michael Mmbaga, Blandina T. Mshana, Stephen E. Mteta, Kien Bartlett, John Lyamuya, Eligius BMC Med Educ Research Article BACKGROUND: Sustainability of research culture in Sub-Saharan Africa is threatened in part by the lack of a critical mass of young researchers with the requisite skills and interest to undertake research careers. This paper describes an intensive mentorship programme combining hierarchical (vertical) and peer-to-peer (horizontal) mentoring strategies among young researchers in a resource limited setting in Sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: A consortium of three partnering large Tanzanian health training institutions (MUHAS, CUHAS and KCMUCo) and two collaborating US institutions (UCSF and Duke University) was formed as part of the five-year Transforming Health Professions Education in Tanzania (THET) project, funded by the NIH through Health Professional Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI). Within THET, the Community of Young Research Peers (CYRP) was formed, comprising of inter-professional and cross-institutional team of 12 Master-level Young Research Peers and 10 co-opted fellows from the former MEPI-Junior Faculty (MEPI-JF) project. The Young Peers received mentorship from senior researchers from the consortium through mentored research awards and research training, and in turn provided reciprocal peer-to-peer mentorship as well as mentorship to undergraduate students. RESULTS: At the end of the first 2 years of the project, all 12 Young Peers were proceeding well with mentored research awards, and some were at more advanced stages. For example, three articles were already published in peer reviewed journals and two other manuscripts were in final stages of preparation. All 12 Young Peers participated in CYRP-wide thematic training workshops on mentoring and secondary data analysis; 11 had undertaken at least three research training short courses in identified areas of need; 9 joined at least one other ongoing research project; 5 made at least one scientific presentation, and 5 participated in at least one submitted grant application. Half of the Young Peers have enrolled in PhD programmes. A collective total of 41 undergraduate students were actively mentored by the Young Peers in research. CONCLUSION: The CYRP has demonstrated to be an effective model for dual vertical and horizontal mentorship in research to young investigators in resource-limited settings. This model is recommended to educators working on developing research competence of early career researchers, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. BioMed Central 2021-03-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7967782/ /pubmed/33731103 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02611-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 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 in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Balandya, Emmanuel
Sunguya, Bruno
Gunda, Daniel W.
Kidenya, Benson
Nyamhanga, Tumaini
Minja, Irene K.
Mahande, Michael
Mmbaga, Blandina T.
Mshana, Stephen E.
Mteta, Kien
Bartlett, John
Lyamuya, Eligius
Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers
title Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers
title_full Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers
title_fullStr Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers
title_full_unstemmed Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers
title_short Building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in Tanzania through mentoring of the Young Research Peers
title_sort building sustainable research capacity at higher learning institutions in tanzania through mentoring of the young research peers
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967782/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33731103
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02611-0
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