Yesterday was my last day at NPC. I met with the Director General, Dr. Jotham Musinguzi, and gave him an update on where we are with the study. We also discussed future plans for this study (i.e. results dissemination), and potential research projects to explore in the future related to health systems modeling and noncommunicable diseases.
I also met with the Director for M&E who is in charge of NPC's research budget. They are currently planning for FY23-24, and I plan to apply for traveling fellowships to return to Uganda during that academic year. So, once I draft my proposals for those applications, I will send to Samuel and he will see whether it can fit into NPC's research budget. He also gave me the recently drafted NPC national research agenda to read so I can see how my proposed project fits in with the key research needs identified by NPC.
Otherwise I got some other NPC goodies including pens, notebooks, and folders... and spent the remaining part of the day reading articles at the hotel! Now I'm headed back to San Diego until I head back to boston for the second year of my PhD program.
I will continue to work on data analysis for the survey over the next few weeks, and we will hopefully be able to present preliminary results to stakeholders in a working group meeting over zoom; and if not, I'm hoping I can find travel funding to come back to Uganda in January 2023 to disseminate our findings and work more on research capacity building with NPC and their staff.