Friday 13th of October 2023

The Makerere-Implementation Science (MakImS) program conducted a trainees’ progress review meeting to track advancement of trainees’ PhD, masters and fellowship research projects. The review meeting attracted over 40 participants including trainees, principal investigators, university faculty and mentors. In their opening remarks, Prof. Moses Kamya and Dr. Fred Semitala, the program’s principal investigators, highlighted the program’s progress since 2021 and re-emphasized training expectations including participating in monthly journal clubs and publishing in open-access peer-reviewed journals, among others.

Thereafter, the trainees presented their research studies and discussed the effectiveness of the methods they have been using. Some of the studies presented included those on ‘Clinical Outcomes for Diabetes Mellitus among People With HIV’; ‘Fidelity of Cervical Cancer’s ‘Screen and Treat’ Protocol among HIV positive women’; ‘Acceptability of a community-based Differentiated Service Delivery (DSD) strategy to increase initiation of TB preventive therapy (TPT) among children’ and ‘Acceptability and outcomes of medication-assisted treatment among people who inject drugs In Uganda’.

Furthermore, the trainees shared achievements and milestones that they have accumulated up their sleeve since joining the program. They also expressed their training needs to ensure continuous improvement in their skills and knowledge. At the end of each presentation, a trainee received constructive feedback from faculty members to help them in refining their studies.

 

This meeting also served as an orientation platform for new masters’ trainees on the program. These presented their research proposals and were advised how to select and apply key theories, models and frameworks for their research. Dr. Semitala closed the full-day meeting by appealing to trainees to continuously identify peer-reviewed journals where they can publish their work.

About the Mak-ImS Program

Mak-Ims is a five-year program that aims to create sustained growth of an Ims research environment at the university. It is funded by the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (2D43TW010037) and is a collaboration between MAK and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

For more information about the program, kindly follow the program on Twitter: @Mak_ims