At the recent CHEPSAA annual meeting held in Ghana from 17 – 21 March 2014, Dr Nonhlanhla Nxumalo of the Centre for Health Policy gave an overview of the ELP, which started in mid-2013 with a capacity development workshop. This workshop included facilitated sessions on leadership capabilities, project management skills and communication skills.
The 25 emerging leaders from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania identified and began to conceptualise health policy and systems research or leadership issues that they would work on during the two-year programme.Dr Nxumalo also highlighted the ELP plans for the remainder of 2014, which will include participation in the Third Global Symposium on Health Systems Research to be held in Cape Town from 30 September – 3 October 2014.
“The emerging leaders present at the workshop brainstormed ideas on topics for the upcoming ELP workshops in July and September 2014,” she said.
In addition, all CHEPSAA delegates worked collectively on key outputs to be finalised before the end of the year, such as publication of articles and implementation of curriculum material. CHP’s additional activities will include media training, mini-symposia, writing retreats and teaching CHEPSAA’s newly developed curriculum.
“Since CHEPSAA’s lifespan is winding down in January 2015, we also discussed the project’s external evaluation and ideas for future collaboration post-CHEPSAA,” Dr Nxumalo added.
CHEPSAA is a consortium of African and European universities funded by the European Union to increase sustainable African capacity to produce and use quality health policy and systems research and analysis.