Health research plays a critical role in strengthening health systems, improving their performance, and strengthening their impact on public health practice. It also adds value to society, as it provides critical information regarding disease trends, risk factors, and outcomes of treatments or health interventions, patterns of care, and health care use and costs. Building research capacity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) has been recognized as one of the most powerful, cost-effective, and sustainable means for advancing health and development. Research findings are critical to influence public health policy at various levels from the local to the subnational, national, and international. Hence, it is important to equip health professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary for research conduct and scientific writing.

Thus, the Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network (EMPHNET) has been supporting the region’s Field Epidemiology Training Programs’ (FETP) residents in building their capacity in designing their studies. As part of its capacity building efforts, EMPHNET recently supported the Field Epidemiology Training Program for Veterinarians (FETPV) in Bangladesh by hosting a two-day online session on proposal writing and research methods for animal health research.  

Led by EMPHNET’s Senior Technical Advisor and Director of its Center of Excellence for Applied Epidemiology (CEAE) Prof. Yousef Khader, the session offered its participants the know- how they need to conduct a literature review, form a research question, and then to form SMART Objectives for their research. Furthermore, the workshop also offered the Bangladesh FETPV residents the knowledge they need to select appropriate study designs for their analytical projects. The second day of the workshop introduced the participants to the methods and skills they need to write research grants proposals. All workshop sessions combined a didactic approach with hands-on training. Towards the end of the workshop, participants were then required to develop methodologies and research designs for their own analytical projects based on the knowledge they had gained.

Earlier in February 2022, EMPHNET supported a similar workshop for the residents of the Tunisia Field Epidemiology Training Program. Together, these workshops fall in line with the many activities that EMPHNET supports for building public health capacities n the EMR.