Under a new initiative, international donors are backing Africa-based policy research to improve local decision-making on complex global issues with potentially enormous humanitarian consequences like food security and climate change. Led by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and funded by IDRC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation, the Think Tank Initiative will provide core funding for 24 African think tanks over 10 years. About US$30 million has been made available for the initial five years. Retaining top quality staff is a challenge, according to Jean Mensa, executive director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a Ghanaian think tank and a grant recipient. Many of the best and brightest researchers look for employment abroad or in international development projects that offer better conditions and more job security. But if African think tanks are to be effective, Mensa said, long-term investment is essential.
Useful Resources
Global health research can often fall within the scope of more broad fields. Consequently, this roadmap includes funding sources that support specifically global health research, as well as those that support global research projects that involve health elements and global health projects that involve research elements. Similarly, training opportunities may be for specifically global health research projects, or opportunities that involve health or research components.
The main purpose of the Future Health Systems Research ProgrammeConsortium's (RPC) is to generate knowledge that shapes health systems to benefit the world's poor. Through research and partnership we want to inform and influence the health systems of the future in Nigeria, India, Uganda, Bangladesh, China and Afghanistan.
Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, United Nations (UN) organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. Google Subscribed Links makes it possible to search deep into Gapminder's moving graphs visualizing world development. Important document series available at this site include 'Human Development; Data Animation'and 'The World Chart'- developed in collaboration between WHO and Swedish institutions with the aim of visualising world health development, thereby enable better use of international health data for learning, advocacy and hypothesis generation. Others include a paper on 'Free software for a world in motion', focusing the need for new educational software environments for exploration of global statistics; and World Development Indicators (WDI, a publication of the World Bank's annual compilation of data about development.
The Gender and Health Equity Network is a partnership of national and international institutions concerned with developing and implementing policies to improve gender and health equity, particularly in resource constrained environments.
A pack by Bridge, a division of IDS, aims to support trade specialists in bringing a gender perspective into their work, and to help gender specialists to understand the broad implications of trade policy and practice. Some of the main questions this pack seeks to address are, in what ways can trade advance or impede gender equality? What practical ways can policy-makers and practitioners promote gender equality in work on trade?
This HIV Gender Assessment Tool, published by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the Stop TB Partnership, aims to assist countries in assessing their HIV and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics and responses from a gender perspective, to ensure that the responses are gender-sensitive, transformative and effective in responding to HIV and TB and to support countries in the submission of gender-sensitive concept notes to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM). The UNAIDS HIV Gender Assessment tool was developed recognising the need for more systematic data collection on gender equality and HIV, as revealed by the mid-term review of the UNAIDS Agenda for Accelerated Country Action for Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV 2010– 201410 and was developed in a UNAIDS Secretariat led consultative, multi-stakeholder process.
As part of its Advocacy Pack series, the Women, Health and Development Program announces its new Gender Equity in Health Advocacy Pack! The kit consists of a fact sheet, an issue paper and a PowerPoint presentation, which present the ethical and empirical underpinnings of the effort to incorporate the gender perspective in health policies and programs. This objective emphasizes the identification and resolution of gender inequities which impede the exercise of women and men's fundamental right to health.
This open source Google doc is collating resources on gender and COVID-19. The doc comprises short summaries of articles which are organised under themes including ‘data and resources’, ‘gender based violence’, ‘women’s contributions’, ‘women’s leadership’, ‘unpaid care work’, ‘PPE’, ‘gender transformative policy’ and ‘gender pay gap’.
This briefing gives an overview of risks of gender-based violence (GBV) in the context of COVID-19. Confinement is expected to increase risks of intimate partner violence for displaced women and girls, worsened socio-economic situation exposes refugee women and girls to increased risks of sexual exploitation by community members and humanitarian workers and there will be challenges in access to regular GBV services. The briefing includes recommendations to mitigate risks and ensure access to GBV services. They include considering from the outset, the gendered impacts of COVID-19, considering the different physical, cultural, security and sanitary needs of women, men, boys and girls in quarantines, providing dignity kits to ensure menstrual health and consulting women and girls on preparedness plans and interventions. Programming through women-led organizations should be prioritised whenever feasible.