Invitation to tender: Equitable Research Partnerships Training

This year we launched the Impact of Climate Change on Health scheme, which will offer collaborative research grants to mid-career researchers from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and the UK working on the impact of climate change on health. The aim of the scheme is to build equitable and sustainable collaborations between SSA and UK researchers addressing the health-related challenges of climate change.

We require the development and delivery of a bespoke equitable research partnerships training programme - for the SSA and UK award holders - to equip them with the necessary skills to develop and maintain fruitful equitable research partnerships. It is anticipated that the training programme will be delivered twice, once per round of awards and prior to the start of the research projects.

The objectives of the training are to:

• Enable award holders to start or refocus partnerships in an equitable and sustainable manner.

• Increase understanding of inequity by mutual identification and discussion of challenges and solutions.

• Facilitate understanding of expectations from the outset of the research partnership.

• Provide tools that will enable award holders to overcome inequity.

• Provide a framework to create the foundations for a solid partnership with clearly identified ways of identifying challenges, raising those, and working effectively together.

Challenges to be explored through the training programme should include, but not be limited to:

• Differences in research ecosystems and supporting structures e.g. research ethics approvals.

• Regional discrepancies, for example language barriers, gender and ethnic inequalities, etc.

• Balance of idea generation and creative input from the outset, as well as mechanisms for equitable governance, ownership and agenda setting.

• Intellectual property brought by each partner and its exploitation.

• Data management.

• Publication authorship and acknowledgement of researchers and institutes involved.

• Monitoring and evaluating the partnership throughout the course of the project.

Deadline for submission of tender: 31 October 2022

For further information, view the full tender instructions.

Any queries regarding this tender should be sent by email to Dr Kelly Makarona, Director of Research at Kelly.Makarona@medicalresearchfoundation.org.uk.