As of writing this blog post, we have officially sent out the pilot survey to 5 district planners. This is great progress for moving the survey forward. We will give them about one week to fill in the survey. We have added questions within the survey to gather their feedback and will have a feedback session scheduled after they try to fill it in. To fill in the survey, these district planners will need to go to their District Health Official (DHO) or other District Health Team (DHT) members who are the target respondents for the survey, and they will also need to visit one health facility and get responses from the facility in-charge.
We are using the district planners to facilitate data collection since the office hosting me this summer - the National Population Council - works with district planners as their main contact in district governments. So through NPC contacts, we can send the survey to the planners and ask them to collect the data for us from their DHO and health facility in-charges. For the pilot we are just going through informal networks (we've sent the survey links and directions via Whatsapp!), however for the full survey we will send official letters from the NPC Director General and also from DGs in the MoH asking for district support for the research study. It would be impossible for me to do this study without this institutional support for the survey, and I am very grateful for this opportunity to work so closely with a government agency.
Me at my desk @ NPC
Unfortunately this last week my colleague and host here, Catherine, was hospitalized and will not be able to work for a few weeks while she recovers. We are hoping she makes a speedy recovery and fully heals. Now that she is unavailable, I needed to garner support from her office to help with the pilot and survey. Catherine's office already knew I was doing this work, and supported it, however I had yet to formally present on the work to the full office and Director General (DG). Before Catherine fell ill, we had scheduled for me to present on our work at the Technical Staff Meeting at NPC to formalize the support for the project. So yesterday I was called in to their meeting and gave a 15 minute presentation and was able to answer questions and receive comments on our approach. It was during this meeting that Catherine's colleagues, including her department head, offered their support in contacting the planners for the pilot survey. So this presentation was very important and I am lucky that I was able to present and officially get NPC support for the work.
Me presenting to the DG (Dr. Jotham Musinguzi) and technical staff @ NPC
Last night I also met Prof. Freddie Ssengooba again for dinner where we discussed future research ideas and potential work relating to health systems modeling in Uganda. He was full of ideas and is very well connected with government discussions, challenges, etc relating to health systems and health financing so it was very interesting to discuss ways that decision science research could support decision making and planning in Uganda and East Africa more broadly. These discussions will hopefully lead to more research opportunities down the road and I am grateful for the opportunity to be here this summer to start to grow these important connections and networks for my career.