Submitted by Shawna O’Hearn, Director the Global Health Office, Dalhousie University

As our team wraps up their two week session in Tanzania we offer the 3rd post in this series – photos as soon as everyone is back in Halifax.

With a packed vehicle, 6 Canadians and Majuto (our fabulous driver), we began our 8 hour journey to Ifakara which took us out of the traffic jams of Dar es Salaam, through many villages as we zoomed along a national park with elephants, zebras and giraffes lining the road, then to a dusty and bumpy road; with the Tanzanian Training Centre for International Health (TTCIH) at the end of the road!  To see Dr Pemba and Joyce greeting us at the end of a long journey made us feel at home.

The training program started on Monday with 40 participants from Ifakara and Mwanza.  The participants from Mwanza are taking their Masters in Public Health at the Catholic University of Health & Allied Sciences.  Students started by learning how to identify a research question, refine it and then explored what methodologies they could consider for their projects.  The participants were divided into 6 groups; two from Mwanza and four from Ifakara. Each group had 5 to 7 participants that included a range of professional disciplines and many  members had not met or worked with each other. The collaboration started with discussion of the research questions put forward by each member of the group. The research questions were based on their own experience and guided by the lecture: “How to develop a research question”. The group then vigorously discussed the merits of each question and selected one to work on as their team project. A spokesperson for each group presented the list of topics to the entire class and noted the one selected by the group and the rationale for its selection.

Some questions that the groups explored:

• Why do women who go to antenatal clinics not return to the hospital for delivery?
• Will the use of mobile phones improve antenatal care?
• What should be done to increase male involvement in reproductive and child health clinics?
• What are the factors associated with late hospital consultation of sick children?

During the second week we focused on writing reports, developing a budget, preparing an abstract and finalizing presentations which happened on Friday.  Students debated, discussed, refined and finalized their questions and methodology

Presentations in front of judges to determine the top two groups as well as graduation happened on Friday.