Embed capacity development within all global health research

A review of health research capacity development identified a range of strategies but a lack of robust evaluation that resulted in unclear effectiveness and weak learning.5 Only a few global health funders systematically allocate resources to research capacity development.6 Power relations between collaborating partners from the Global North and Global South continue to lead to unfair ownership of data, unfair authorship and other problems that together have been labelled a neocolonialist model of capacity building.6 Countries in sub-Saharan Africa allocate few resources to develop research capacity.7 Further, academic institutions’ research culture in the Global South is often theoretical and even detached from the health system challenges in their own countries.8 With the COVID-19 pandemic, it is evident that low-income and middle-income countries have a great need for robust research and implementation capacity, which is essential for monitoring, managing and overcoming the current challenges. Implementation research with embedded capacity development Ethiopia successfully reduced child mortality during the past decades, but coverage, utilisation and quality of primary newborn and child health services have remained low. A barrier analysis and evidence synthesis informed the intervention, including community engagement activities, supportive supervision, training and mentoring of primary care workers and efforts to enhance district ownership and accountability for child health services. With the vision to enhance national excellence and build capacity for health system research, the government created a consortium with four Ethiopian universities, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, the non-governmental organisations supporting programme implementation and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.