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🇳🇬 Nigeria /Health & Science

Nigeria’s Health Ministry and NISA Call for Implementation Science to Improve Care

From ThisDay · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources New plan
  • Nigeria’s health ministry and the Nigeria Implementation Science Alliance called for implementation science to improve healthcare outcomes.
  • The ministry is developing exchanges between health policymakers and researchers through proposed sabbatical placements.
  • NISA said it aims to train specialists and connect university research with practical programmes such as malaria control.

Nigeria’s health ministry and the Nigeria Implementation Science Alliance want researchers and healthcare policymakers to stop working in separate worlds. Their proposal is to place university researchers inside government health programmes, where they can learn how evidence becomes policy and practice.

Speaking at the 11th annual NISA Scientific Conference in Abuja, John Ovurouye, director and head of planning and research at the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, said the ministry had launched innovative programmes to improve healthcare delivery. He also described plans for collaboration between ministry policymakers, universities and research institutions.

The proposed arrangement would use sabbatical-style exchanges. Directors in the ministry and experienced university researchers would swap placements, bringing research expertise and policy experience into each other’s institutions.

We are not doing anything new. What we are doing here is different. It’s connecting them so that they’re not working in silos.

· Echezona EzeanolueThe NISA trustee board chair explained the alliance’s effort to link university research with government health programmes.

NISA trustee board chair Echezona Ezeanolue said the alliance wanted to build a strong group of Nigerian specialists in research and innovation. He described a training model in which a PhD student could spend eight weeks in a malaria programme during the first year, 12 weeks during the second and six months during the final year. By graduation, the student would have practical experience and could already be considered for employment by the programme.

“We are not doing anything new. What we are doing here is different. It’s connecting them so that they’re not working in silos,” Ezeanolue said. The conference focused on moving “from evidence to impact” and on making health policies and programmes work sustainably. NISA also plans to sponsor Nigerian scholars who specialize in implementation science and its use in policy and programme delivery.

The university is training people that have no experience because they’re not working there.

· Echezona EzeanolueEzeanolue described the practical experience gap the proposed placements aim to address.
About this summary

Originally published by ThisDay in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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