CompletedPregnancy, Children & Inherited ConditionsInfection & Immunity
Informing global efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of low and middle-income populations: The INDEPTH Network of Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems.
Associated organisationsAfrica Health Research Institute · Indepth Network · KEM Hospital Research Centre · University of the WitwatersrandEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£2.1M
PeriodApr 2012 — Jun 2018
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A network of 42 research centres across Africa, Asia and Oceania is pooling health and life-event data on millions of people to track how populations are changing. These centres run long-term household surveys that follow entire communities, capturing births, deaths, illnesses, and migrations. The problem is that most health data from low- and middle-income countries comes from hospitals or one-off surveys, missing the full picture of how people live and die. This network fills that gap by providing continuous, population-level evidence on health inequalities, vulnerability across the life course, and progress toward development targets. If the project succeeds, it will create a harmonised, publicly accessible data repository that allows researchers to combine information across sites. This will strengthen multi-centre evaluations of health interventions and inform government policies on everything from disease control to social protection. A new master’s programme in research-oriented data management will also address a critical shortage of skilled data scientists in these regions. The result is a more robust evidence base for decisions that affect the daily lives of people in some of the world’s poorest communities.
View original technical description
The INDEPTH Network involves 42 centres across Africa, Asia and Oceania that run longitudinal health and demographic surveillance systems (HDSS) covering over 3 million people. Based in rural and urban settings, INDEPTH's household- and population-based research is shaped by complex epidemiological and demographic transitions. INDEPTH today is a credible, policy-relevant research and training network generating population-based data and building multi-site collaborations. To realise INDEPTH' s exceptional potential, we propose targeting concurrently scientific, data and training programmes. Effective use and sharing of existing longitudinal data is vital; large, heterogeneous samples are possible by pooling HDSS data. We aim to: - Better understand transitions, health inequalities and likely explanations - Investigate vulnerability and resilience along the life-course - Evaluate health and development progress against targets e.g. MDGs. The iSHARE data programme,will tr ansform cross-site data management through effectively harmonising, storing and curating data. A well-tended repository will support ethical publication of analytic and core epi-demographic datasets, public access and dissemination. A new INDEPTH-Wits MSc in Research-oriented Data Management targets a serious deficit; the masters-doctoral-postdoctoral pipeline will be reinforced. Together, this will profoundly strengthen INDEPTH's research and data-sharing platform, support cohort stud ies, enhance multi-centre intervention-evaluations, advance policy contributions, and extend partnerships with leading research networks.
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