FIRST PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH CONFERENCE IN SOMALIA

Somalia's Ministry of Health, the National Institute of Health, and the Somali Research and Education Network are engaged in planning and organizing the first Public Health Research Conference in Somalia.

Main Theme: Laying the Foundation for Health Research: Presentation of Commissioned Topics for discussion and support.

Aim

Strengthen health research in Somalia through partnership and collaboration

Objectives

• Development of Health Research Priority Setting to effectively promote research areas providing the greatest public health benefits to the recovering national health system
• Development of National Ethical Guidelines for Health Research
• Promote collaborative and partnership research to improve health services
• Somali Universities Health Research and Capacity Building: Opportunities and Challenges and the Way forward

The main topics and Activities of the conference

1.  Laying the Foundation for Health Research: Presentation of Commissioned Topics for discussion and support
   • Development of Health Research Priority Setting to effectively promote research areas providing the greatest public health benefits to the recovering national health system
   • Development of National Ethical Guidelines for Health Research
   • Collaborative and partnership research to improve health services
   • Somali Universities Health Research and Capacity Building: Opportunities and Challenges and the Way forward
2. Presentation of Health Research Abstracts
   • The constituted Conference Scientific Committee (CSC) will review all the submitted abstracts selecting the presentations to be given at the meeting as per the conference guidelines.
   • The conference will be tentatively organized by the end of November 2021 and the deadline for abstract submissions will be the 15th of November 2021. 
   • The conference participants whose abstracts are accepted will make their presentation following the set conference program.
   • Once all is agreed on, relative to the conference dates and submission guidelines and procedures, NIH and SomaliREN will formally advertise the event in the media through all possible means including social media to create awareness.
      
3. Conference Organization
    
   • Acknowledging the tremendous amount of planning time for the conference and the efforts necessary to work on logistics towards successfully achieving its set goal, a Conference Organizing Committee (COC) will be established.
   • The COC will liaise with all the conference stakeholders and sponsors to widely share through the NIH leadership and FMOH, the needed support for the successful organization of the conference
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4. Conference Participants
    
   • The NIH and SomaliREN will coordinate the organization of the conference and invite participants from the Somali Universities; presenters from the federal and state ministries of health; members from the Somali Swedish Research Collaboration for Health offering technical support to the conference and the international partners assisting the national health system.
      
   • To ensure the coherence and quality of submissions, the CSC will outline recommendations on the development of the abstracts and posters to be submitted and on their subsequent conference presentation.