On Thursday the 5th of July, COHRED and the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the implementation of a Research for Health Managerial Capacity Building in Latin America (RIMAIS) course. From left to right in the above photo of the signing ceremony are: Dr. Laura Magana, Academic Dean at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, Dr. Mauricio Hernandez, Director General at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico and Dr. Francisco Becerra Head of Projects and Programmes at COHRED.

The Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED) in partnership with the Ibero-American Ministerial Network for Learning and Health Research and with funding from the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID) is running the first of three month long courses on strengthening research for health managerial capacities.

These courses are targeted at research for health managers in low and middle-income countries.

According to Francisco Becerra (see photo), the Head of Projects and Programmes at COHRED, there are forty-two (42) registered participants from countries in Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

“The three courses are focused on policies for research for health, evaluation and monitoring of research for health systems and the use of research results”, said Becerra.

These three units are linked with other Research for Health Managerial Capacity Building in Latin America (RIMAIS) projects and have a connection between them. Each course (three in total) have twenty (20) hours of personal and group work, and ten (10 hours of) live sessions, with two and a half hours each week for four weeks.

Participants in the course have got access to online platforms that provide the course’s materials, tasks and exercises. This virtual learning classroom allows for high quality learning, knowledge sharing and collaboration. The idea is to translate the ideas generated in the course into actions at the regional and national levels.

This initiative is financed by the AECID through a grant to (RIMAIS). COHRED is coordinating the initiative whilst the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) Mexico is providing the internet platforms, assisting with instructional design and will also award academic certificates to the participants that will complete the courses.

The first course which started on Wednesday the 27^th of June will run up to the last week of July and will cover issues related to policies for research for health.