Associated organisationsAfrica Health Research Institute · KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme · Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme · University of Malaya · University of OxfordEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£3.0M
PeriodOct 2023 — Sept 2028
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A network of bioethics researchers across Africa and Asia is handing control of its agenda to scientists in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Global Health Bioethics Network (GHBN) has for years connected five Wellcome-funded research programmes in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam with the Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford. The problem it addresses is that ethical questions in global health—such as how to obtain informed consent in communities with low literacy, or how to share benefits fairly when a trial succeeds—have often been framed and studied by researchers in wealthy countries, not by those on the front lines. The network’s new model shifts leadership to LMIC-based scientists, expands membership to more institutions, and launches a peer-reviewed funding scheme for early-career researchers from LMICs to run their own small collaborative projects. If this succeeds, the ethical frameworks guiding global health research will be shaped by the people who live with the consequences of those decisions, rather than imposed from outside. The work is primarily about building research capacity and shifting power, not about a specific technology or treatment.
View original technical description
The Global Health Bioethics Network (GHBN) is highly effective and resilient platform for the promotion of and support for LMIC-led research in bioethics. This research combines a contextually sensitive investigation of practical ethical problems on the front line of global health research, practice and policy, and a sophisticated engagement with macro-level ethical and political issues in global and social justice. GHBN is a partnership between the five Wellcome Africa and Asia Research Programmes (AAPs) in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford. It aims to build the capacity of the AAPs to identify and address ethical issues arising in their research; promote and support research on practical ethical issues relating to global health research and practice, and, more broadly, to promote ethical reflection across the AAPs. The current proposal represents an exciting and ambitious moment of transition for the GHBN. At the heart of this development is the implementation of a new model of collaborative LMI leadership, an expansion of its activities to a broader and more inclusive LMIC membership, and the launch of a peer-reviewed funding scheme to support small scale LMIC-led collaborative projects for early career researchers.
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