Building research capacity within cardiovascular disease prevention and management in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A collaboration of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Lancet Commission on Hypertension Group, Resolve to Save Lives, and the World Hypertension League

Barriers for potential investigators range from lack of funding and mentorship to inadequate access to scientific literature, limited institutional support, slow Internet speed, and limited English language proficiency. 3 As the incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and associated risk factors rise in LMICs, 4 the importance of LMIC scientific communities generating evidence and disseminating findings and recommendations is critical. [...]the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Lancet Commission on Hypertension Group, Resolve to Save Lives, and the World Hypertension League came together with a shared goal of increasing opportunities for LMIC researchers to systematically evaluate CVD initiatives and share their results with the scientific community. 5 In 2019, CDC began a mentorship collaboration with the Lancet Commission on Hypertension Group, Resolve to Save Lives, and World Hypertension League, and invited 35 LMIC public health trainees and practitioners to propose manuscripts that could enhance the evidence base and inform future work in their regions. [...]of the close and helpful guidance of the mentors, my work was published in the special section and can now have far-reaching impact. (Ashish Krishna, special section author who published on hypertension control strategies in India) With participation in the initiative entirely voluntary, mentors note their motivation for participating as due to their interest in helping LMIC researchers build their capacity in disseminating their research to the larger scientific community, thus increasing the global impact of the authors’ work: I wanted to help early-career investigators who have less access to research resources to disseminate their research findings to the global scientific community.