Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn 1 HEALTH RESEARCH CAPACITY AND WATER-RELATED DISEASES
: Improving Risk Assessment Strategies for Public Health Care in Uzbekistan (HEALTHCAP)
(January 2014 – December 2016) METHODOLOGY HEALTHCAP activities are divided into seven work packages (WPs) organized in three different themes – disciplinary themes, interdisciplinary theme and health research capacity building themes with a purpose of closing the gap between ‘research‐practice’. WP1 Project management and engaging with stakeholders helps to facilitate overall coordination and actively interact with the stakeholders and partners to strengthen the project and also for effective dissemination of the findings. Disciplinary Themes WP2 Mapping the epidemiology of water‐related diseases examines the relationship between epidemiological & ecological factors and WRD in case study districts (material exposure to WRD), and contribute towards strengthening the surveillance and monitoring of WRD in the districts. WP3 Socio‐economic and institutional analysis of WRD comprehensively analyzes the socio‐
economic and institutional factors facilitating the growth and exposure of humans to WRD in case study areas (or social exposure to WRD). This will contribute in strengthening the existing surveillance and monitoring of diseases, and contribute towards strengthening health database management. Interdisciplinary Theme WP4 Integrated risk assessment of WRD takes a systemic perspective to draw together the disciplinary findings towards the development of integrated risk assessment, contribute towards strengthening the health data base and the surveillance and monitoring systems. It will provide vital insights into the relative importance of key global environmental change factors influencing disease risk. Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn 2 Health Research Capacity Building Themes WP5 Health‐data base management system to revise the current health information reporting system for effective surveillance and monitoring of WRD. WP6 Capacity development of public health professionals attempts to strengthen the existing health research capacity in the country and coordinate the capacity building initiative in the project to establish a Center of Excellence for Public Health research in Uzbekistan. WP7 Public health policy support reviews policies, and institutional arrangements involved in public health care in the country, and draw the findings from various other WPs to enhance health data base management, improve water quality regulation, to generate appropriate institutional strategy for safe water, and to promote efficient policy‐making system. The HEALTHCAP Consortium has been assembled to address the practical objectives of the work HEALTHCAP Work Packages and their Linkages
packages through active interaction with stakeholders. It uses a combination of disciplinary WP 1. Project Management & Engaging with stakeholders
and interdisciplinary approach to improve the risk assessment strategies for public health care in WP 2. Epidemiology
WP 7. Public Health
of WRD
Policy Support
Uzbekistan. The disciplinary approach interprets and WP 4. Integrated
communicates knowledge from Risk Assessment
of WRD
different disciplines to allow a WP
3.
Social
and
better understanding of the risk Institutional Analysis of
WP 5. Health Database
from diverse perspectives in Work WRD
Management System
packages 2 and 3. The interdisciplinary approach WP 6. Capacity Development of Public Health Professionals
integrates diverse disciplinary perspectives for an integrated risk assessment in work package 4. The rationale for using integrated risk assessment as the main research is twofold. First the complexity of the issue demands that integrated assessment methods are used so that key interactions and feedbacks between diverse factors (macro and micro) that drive diseases can be identified and prioritized. Second, we will look at different temporal and spatial scale levels to understand the factors influencing the diseases. The information from these will be modeled using a combination of statistical techniques, spatial mapping, probability analysis, descriptive analysis and through integrated modeling. Together these offer added values and offer decision‐makers useful information for public health care. The findings from these WP’s will be used to strengthen health data base (WP5), in offering insights for public health policy (WP7), and capacity building (WP6). These themes will be coordinated by the Work Package ‐ Project Management and Capacity building, which will facilitate overall coordination and promote dialogue to empower stakeholders to undertake, interpret and disseminate high quality research. Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn 3 The process of combining knowledge elements from the different scientific disciplines with active involvement of stakeholders is of crucial importance for health research capacity building initiative. HEALTHCAP applies diverse research methods, tools of analysis and its outputs for research capacity building with a foresight to establish the Center of Excellence of Public Health Research in Uzbekistan. The diverse research methods and tools for analysis are applied in different phases to build on the strengths of each of these and capture contextual information: ‐ familiarization phase, exploratory phase, informative and validation phase. Familiarization phase involves application of methods that provide background information on the context of research. The methods applied in this investigation are mainly; review of secondary documents and workshops that draw on the rich experience of European and Uzbekistan partners. This information coupled with stakeholder workshops will be used to harmonize indicators for integrated risk assessment; identify measures for building research capacity and devise dissemination strategies for improved surveillance and monitoring systems of water‐
related diseases in the Tashkent province. Exploratory phase involves enlisting the core issues for assessing the factors influencing WRD and means to build capacity of the researchers. The methods applied in this investigation will be internal project meetings, training of public health professionals, structured interviews, and semi‐
structured interviews. Overall they provide insights on the diverse set of factors influencing the WRD at a household level. These diverse set of factors will be analyzed through simplistic statistical tools to identify their significance spatially. Information phase will be carried out to understand the spatial and temporal factors influencing WRD at an individual level. The investigations will combine ‘record‐keeping’ and ‘on‐the‐spot field visits’ in the case studies of the Tashkent Province. Validation phase brings together the information from the previous investigations to share and validate the findings through workshops, internal project meetings, training programs, feedbacks from website and during meetings with stakeholders, before making the findings available for public use (Refer to Annexure 4 for detailed Dissemination of Results). The training and capacity building activity will ensure the basic foundation for establishing a Center of Excellence for Public Health Research in Uzbekistan within the RISHOD office. The tools of analysis are varied to capture the diversity of factors, visually present them as appealing for decision‐making, and to capture the contextual element. HEALTHCAP adopts simplistic statistical tools, combining them with geo‐spatial mapping and descriptive analysis.