Themes

To achieve the aims of the Tropical Partners project the program of work has been broken into three Themes:

Theme 1 - Capacity strengthening in implementation research around surveillance and response

Theme 2 - Risk evaluation and health systems mapping

Theme 2a: Map public health systems activities in relation to International Health Regulations, addressing gaps between health policy and implementation.

Theme 2b: Map risk of epidemic spread/cross-border incursion related to priority pathogens.    

Theme 3 - Building on existing relationships to provide exemplar collaborations (in the field)

Theme 3a: Tuberculosis Modelling to inform National TB program policy.

Theme 3b: Risk factors and vectors for Zika and other arboviruses in the Solomon Islands.

Theme 3c: Transferability of the SDSS approach for ID control activities in the Solomon Islands.

Theme 3d: Investigate the distribution and prevalence of important zoonotic diseases in PNG.

Team: CI Professor Sarah Larkins, CI Dr David MacLaren, CI Professor Maxine Whittaker, Dr Karen Carlisle and Mr Humpress Harrington.

A fit-for-purpose health workforce, appropriately distributed geographically, networked, and with required skillsets is an essential part of detecting and responding to EIDs.  The team will adopt the successful elements of the Structured Operational Research and Training Initiative (SORT-IT) model which have been customised to support advocacy, policy and practice translation. The modified SORT-IT curriculum will be mostly delivered in-country and the curriculum will be delivered by attending workshops.

In each country, meetings are being held with the stakeholders ( ministries and health, development agencies, universities, NGOs, bilaterals and multilaterals such as SPC and WHO) to identify target topic areas in surveillance and response, target participants, processes of identifying participants, and processes of ensuring “release” of participants to participate and undertake research over a 12 month period. Suitable people in-country have been identified to be Mentors.

The select participants (Research Fellows) will be from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Timor L'Este, and Indonesia. They will undertake implementation research training and complete a workplace linked implementation research project on a surveillance and response question identified in consultations with their manager. Supervision and mentoring will be provided from the project team and from their local in-country mentors.  Most of the research will be conducted in the Fellows workplace developing and implementing the research.

Capacity strengthening through research training program activities:

This Theme integrates the development of an evidence-based health system preparedness assessment tool with a comprehensive gap analysis of health systems preparedness for emerging infectious diseases within selected countries of the Asia-Pacific.

The Investigators will engage closely with key stakeholders within these countries to ensure context-appropriate, and adaptable, preparedness indicators, in addition to capabilities for national implementation of preparedness assessment.

In doing this, they aim to facilitate countries to identify strengths and weaknesses of both national and regional systems, including mechanisms that could augment or undermine capacities to address and respond to both existing infectious diseases of high burden and emerging infectious diseases that pose transboundary threats.

Further to this, they aim to provide quantitative assessment and visualisation of emerging infectious diseases risk, particularly international spread of infectious diseases.

Theme 2a: Map public health systems activities in relation to International Health Regulations, addressing gaps between health policy and implementation.

Team: CI Professor Ben Marais, Associate Professor Joel Negin, and Dr Anna Palagyi.

Theme 2b: Map risk of epidemic spread/cross-border incursion related to priority pathogens.

Team: CIA Professor Emma McBryde and Dr Bosco Ho.

Theme 3b: Risk factors and vectors for Zika and other arboviruses in the Solomon Islands.

Team: CI Professor Tom Burkot, CI Professor Archie Clements, CI Dr David MacLaren, CI Professor George Milne, Mr Humpress Harrington, Dr Paul Horwood, Dr Joel Kelso and Dr Tanya Russell.

The objectives of this team is to assess the incidence, risk factors and vectors of Zika virus and other arboviruses in representative areas of the Solomon Islands.

Prof Tom Burkot and Dr David Maclaren met in March 2017 with approximately 20 Ministry of Health and Medical Services personnel including the Permanent Secretary and the Undersecretary for Health Improvement and many Directors of Departments in Honiara. The meeting was opened by Dr Tenneth Dalipanda (Permanent Secretary) who outlined the Ministry Research Priorities for 2017.