The Global Health Network and the resources available for capacity building

Trudie Lang navigates the Global Health Network (TGHN), which offers “Communities of Practice” for accelerating and streamlining research, and thereby improving health evidence, through a digital platform.

This online science park is where research groups can benefit from collaborative working, knowledge sharing and dissemination. It also provides a platform for capacity development and resources. The flagship area for capacity development is the training centre, with 250,000 modules taken, embedded within the Global Health Trials section of the platform. A resource of particular interest for research methodology is the “Process Map” toolkit, which currently provides systematic guidance for planning global health research projects and is being repurposed for use in tracking new studies.

The resources available for capacity building include REDe, the research capacity network for preparedness for the EU Zika consortia. This aims to support a rapid and coherent research response to the Zika outbreak in the short term and to establish lasting capacity to conduct research in the event of other vector-borne and emerging infectious disease outbreaks in Latin America and the Caribbean in the long term.