Better Research for Better Health: University of Oxford and Fiocruz partner to improve health research and capacity development globally

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A new strategic partnership between Fiocruz and The Global Health Network will amplify the impact of Fiocruz’s health research and capacity development initiatives by promoting research capacity building across Portuguese-speaking countries, and enabling research findings from the Zika outbreak to benefit public health worldwide.

Fiocruz, one of the world’s leading public health institutions and Brazil’s institute for health science and technology, has signed an agreement with The Global Health Network at the University of Oxford to enable evidence generated from research to drive improvements in global health in the most resource-poor and hard to reach areas of the globe.

This new partnership will:

1. Establish a knowledge sharing hub for Fiocruz, embedded within The Global Health Network. This hub will enhance the visibility of Fiocruz’s research and capacity development activities on this global platform. It will both connect existing partners and promote new partnerships, inviting the rest of the world to learn from and benefit from their advances. 
2. Promote research capacity building across Portuguese-speaking countries. With an initial focus on Angola, followed by Mozambique, Fiocruz and The Global Health Network will collaborate with local research organisations to promote access to training, support, tools and resources for local health works – all in Portuguese. This aims to overcome language as a barrier to conducting research, giving health workers the skills and training to build their career through research experience.
3. Share research findings and recommendations from the Zika outbreak. A knowledge sharing hub will consolidate and communicate findings from the three Zika research consortia to health workers, research teams and, most importantly, the families impacted by this devastating outbreak. It will provide a powerful mechanism for sharing the findings and helping these results get back to the community, local health delivery teams and into practice to make a lasting impact. Through sharing recommendations arising from research during the outbreak, the results can be used for public health benefit and, over time, become an integral part of vector control activities. This is an important outcome for ZikaPLAN and ZIKAction*, and for ZIKAlliance an opportunity to contribute by sharing information that can be useful for feeding the platform.

Fiocruz has a long history of embedding health research into health systems and building research capacity through equipping health workers with the skills to put research results into practice and generate evidence, with outcomes that improve the lives of their communities. The Global Health Network brings its extensive experience in knowledge sharing and communities of practice to amplify the impact of Fiocruz’s work on a global scale.

A shared ethos between Fiocruz and The Global Health Network underpins this partnership: firstly, that public health can be improved through research and, secondly, in which the advances from each programme enriches the others. By building capacity for research across the globe, evidence can be generated where such data is missing, across diseases, geographies and communities, and the impacts of this research can be accelerated when methods, best practice and experience are shared.