South African higher education institutions as drivers of change for health and wellbeing

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Principal Investigators

Team Members

*indicates student or postdoctoral fellow

Project Period

01/01/2022 – 31/12/2026

This project seeks to address the twin challenges of developing capacity for training and research in pharmaceutical public health and doctoral education, and contributing to the goal of strengthening health and pharmaceutical systems capable of sustainably addressing key threats to health.

Project Summary

In this programme SOPH (UWC) seeks to address the challenges of developing its own and partner’s capacity as drivers of change for health and wellbeing (SDG 3,4). We want to contribute to the following long-term changes of improved health and wellbeing of vulnerable communities in South Africa and beyond (SDG 3): strengthened health and pharmaceutical systems capable of sustainably addressing key threats to health (SDG 3), and improved research-policy linkage in terms of development and implementation of context appropriate and evidence-based policies and strategies for health systems strengthening including pharmaceutical system (SDG 3,4).

In the medium term the program aims to contribute to the following changes:

Enabling South-African Higher Education Institutions to be drivers of change for health and wellbeing (SDG 3,4),
Improved individual, institutional and network capacity (for training, research, policy and stewardship, in Pharmaceutical Public Health, and doctoral education in South Africa and beyond (SDG3,4).

The synergistic project results/outputs that will contribute to the above changes encompass education, research, getting research into policy and practice (GRIPP), online/digital platform development , and consolidating alignment.

The overall programme is informed by principles of context-sensitivity, south-south collaboration, and co-production of research and knowledge. The south-south and north-south collaborations will enable lesson learning across countries and jurisdictions, and build evidence on individual country experiences in the continent.