Page 105 - SAMRC Annual Report 2023-24

PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

2 Project Africa Gradient workshop held in February 2024.
nd

Equitable capacity development The Global Evidence Local Adaptation (GELA)

for empowering communities project invests in building skills and capacity of
decision-makers and researchers to produce, use
HSRU staff facilitated five webinars, 20 lectures and adapt relevant evidence for informing guidelines
and seven workshops. Six masters and two PhD for newborn and child health with a combination of
students graduated, and 42 students are currently structured and 'on-the-job' learning opportunities.
being supervised. One of the PhD graduates, Dr GELA hosted an Evidence-to Decision Guideline
Pereira-Kotze, was awarded the Miriam Labbok Panel Simulation workshop for the South African
New Investigator Award for her paper on Legislation Guideline Development Group. In addition, four
and Policies for the Right to Maternity Protection in students from Malawi, South Africa and Nigeria
South Africa: A Fragmented State of Affairs.
were awarded bursaries for the master's in clinical
CWEL+ is a two-year, pilot, cluster-randomised epidemiology at Stellenbosch University.
trial funded by IDRC Canada, led by Dr Darshini
Govindasamy and collaborators in the SAMRC Science for creating a
Gender and Health Research Unit and Simon Fraser healthier society
University. This is evaluating a combination of cash
transfers plus economic-empowerment workshops Stakeholder engagement is essential for promoting
for improving the well-being of caregivers of awareness of issues and changes in health systems.
children and adolescents living with HIV. To date, 140 We have contributed to enhancing transparency on
caregivers have graduated from the programme. the NHI Bill. The South African Portfolio Committee
on Health held hearings on the Bill from 117
HSRU staff in Durban hosted the GENS job individuals, organisations and institutions. HSRU,
shadow programme which included 14 learners. together with other collaborators, collated the
The team provided an overview of the unit's work presentations, publishing a series of op-eds in the
and learners visited a Durban field site to learn Daily Maverick (Part 1 – 6).
more about the research in mental health and
well-being with caregivers and adolescents. They A Grand Challenges Pilot presented the Motherload
also hosted 15 undergraduate community-health Exhibition in Cape Town. A collaboration between
students from the Durban University of Technology the University of Cape Town, HSRU, the University of
and 20 postgraduate public-health students from KwaZulu-Natal, Flourish (Grow Great Campaign) – a
Africa and Canada as part of the UKZN/SANTHE women's rights organisation, and the Western Cape
programme. Students learned about conducting government, the project's objective is to amplify
HIV implementation science with vulnerable groups. the voices of low-income women. Employing the

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