https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9649-8170
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ABSTRACT
Building fair, equitable, and beneficial partnerships between institutions collaborating in research in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and high-income countries (HIC) has become an integral part of research capacity building in global health in recent years. In this paper, we offer an example of an academic collaboration between the University of California Los Angeles, Center for Health Policy and Research (UCLA CHPR) and the University of Philippines, Manila, College of Public Health (UPM CPH) that sought to build an equitable partnership between research institutions. The partnership was built on a project to build capacity for research and produce data for policy action for the prevention and care of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through primary healthcare in the Philippines. The specific objectives of the project were to: (1) locally adapt the Primary Care Assessment Tool for the Philippines and use the adapted tool to measure facility-level primary care delivery, (2) conduct focus group discussions (FGDs) to gather qualitative observations regarding primary care readiness and capacity, and (3) conduct a comprehensive population-based health survey among adults on NCDs and prior healthcare experience. We describe here the progression of the partnership between these institutions to carry out the project and the elements that helped build a stronger connection between the institutions, such as mutual goal setting, cultural bridging, collaborative teams, and capacity building. This example, which can be used as a model depicting new directionality and opportunities for LMIC-HIC academic partnerships, was written based on the review of shared project documents, including study protocols, and written and oral communications with the project team members, including the primary investigators. The innovation of this partnership includes: LMIC-initiated project need identification, LMIC-based funding allocation, a capacity-building role of the HIC institution, and the expansion of scope through jointly offered courses on global health.
Responsible Editor Stig Wall
Responsible Editor Stig Wall
Acknowledgments
We thank the Philippine California Advanced Research Institute (PCARI), which is a project of the Philippine Government’s Commission on Higher Education (CHED), for the funding for this project and all at CHED as well as at UP Manila and UCLA who have helped develop this capacity-building project.
Author contributions
Anu Aryal was the primary author of the manuscript. Authors Fernando Garcia, AJ Scheitler, Emerito Faraon, TJ Moncatar, Ofelia Saniel, Roberto Rosada, and Riti Shimkhada provided key input and authored various sections or parts of the manuscript. Authors Marilyn Lorenzo, James Macinko, Ninez Ponce provided key input and were integral to the conception of the study and the establishment of this project at UPM and UCLA.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Ethics/consent
An ethics statement is not applicable because this study is based on published literature, study documents, and communications between the authors of this manuscript.
Paper context
This paper describes a collaborative study designed and introduced by academic institutions from the Philippines and the US. The partnership was designed to build capacity for primary healthcare research and produce data for policy action for the prevention and care of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the Philippines. We describe the evolution of the academic partnership, implementation of the partnership project, and examine the elements that have built a stronger connection between the partnering institutions, along with the challenges.