The programme for Eastern Europe was organised by the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) at the World Health Organization, which leads SORT IT (Structured Operational Research and Training Initiative), in collaboration with the WHO European Regional Office (EURO). The faculty has been drawn from The Union, Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF), TDR and WHO EURO.
Through two workshops, participants in the SORT IT programme will go through all the steps of conducting operational research – from writing a protocol and obtaining ethics approval to conducting the study and submitting the results for publication. Evidence briefs for policy will also be produced, where appropriate. All of the participants' research projects are focused on drug-resistant TB and draw on record reviews of previously collected data.
The first workshop was held in May 2013 with the follow-up scheduled for April 2014. The Estonian National Institute for Health Development, Tallinn, is hosting the workshops with support from the WHO Country Office.
The 12 participants are from Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Many of them lead and manage their country's monitoring and performance health data, which they are using to investigate gaps and identify potential solutions for improvement in the management of drug-resistant TB in their region.
SORT IT was launched in January 2013 with the goal of helping countries to:
• Conduct operational research (OR) in accordance with their own priorities;
• Develop adequate and sustainable OR capacity in public health programmes; and
• Create an organisational culture of policy and practice that is informed by OR and leads to improved programme performance.
For further information on SORT IT, please contact: Andy Ramsay at TDR (ramsaya@who.int)