By Agnes Namaganda
Child Health and Development Centre (CHDC) is a multidisciplinary research centre at Makerere University College of Health Sciences. Her mandate is to promote the wellbeing of children and women in Uganda through multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral research, teaching, training and partnerships.
CHDC is planning a series of symposia to disseminate findings from the various research studies at the Centre. CHDC is a Research Centre in the School of Medicine at the College of Health Sciences, Makerere University (MaK). The first symposium will be hosted by the Families, Parenting for Respectability program, led by Dr. Godfrey Siu, under the theme Promoting Child Health by Addressing Parenting and Family Disparities. This will take place on Thursday 22nd February 2024; 9:00 am to 12:00 pm at the Yusuf Lule Central Teaching Facility; Makerere University main campus. The subsequent symposia include one by the Technology and Child Health Program, which is led by Dr. Herbert Muyinda. This will take place in March. The third symposium will be by the Non-communicable diseases among Children Program which is led by Dr. Anthony Batte and Dr. Aggrey Dhabangi. This is planned for the month of April. The fourth symposium is planned for May and it will be by the Health Systems’ Strengthening Program which is led by Dr. Arthur Mpimbaza.
According to Dr. Herbert Muyinda, Director of CHDC, the objective of these symposia is “to enable CHDC disseminate its research findings and innovation to stakeholders. This will facilitate the translation of research findings into policy.” He added that invited guests include researchers, academicians, policy makers and implementers, international partners, and the student community.
Speaking about the funding for this activity, Dr. Mpimbaza who is at the helm of organizing this activity said, “funding for this activity is from a grant supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This funding was directed through the Directorate of Research and Graduate Training under the “Consolidating Early-career Academics Programme (CECAP, 2022-2024) at MaK and partner public universities. Dr. Mpimbaza who is a Senior Lecturer at CHDC is a Post Doc Fellow on this grant, through which this departmental strengthening sub-grant was awarded.
About Child Health and Development Centre
To ensure efficiency, the research activities are organized under six research programmes as outlined below;
- Health Systems Strengthening
- Families, Parenting & Child Health
- Non-Communicable Diseases among Children
- Technology and Child Health
- Capacity Building & Training
- Early Childhood Development & Health Outcomes
The Centre currently has a number of research grants in different domains of health research and training. The main areas of focus include disease surveillance – HIV and AIDS, malaria, parenting and child protection, health technology, and knowledge transfer.