CURRENT RESEARCH PRIORITIES
Research priorities for the Programme will be based on the agenda drawn from consultative meeting with stakeholders each year. Applicants should address these priorities stating in their letters of intent a specific problem area and its importance to the 5- Year Programme of Work/Health Sector Reforms. Analytic capacity will be given priority for selection whether of a single or multinational study. Applicants should also state how their proposals could benefit policy makers, health system planners, local donors, researchers and NGOs/Communities.
The main Principal Investigator must be a Ghanaian and only s/he can submit the proposals. However research teams are encouraged to collaborate with Dutch partners. The PI must be institutionally based and should include a letter of support from the Head of the institution.
Letters of intent will be reviewed a competitive basis based a set of criteria by Joint Programme Committee (JPC). PIs of short-listed ones will be asked to submit full proposals for another review. Projects will receive technical support during execution tailored to their needs.
Guidelines for application
Information for the applicant
General information:
HOW TO APPLY
Letters of intent should be received by the Health Research Unit not later than close of business on the day specified in the call. Letters should exceed 1,500 words (excluding CVs) in electronic and hard copies:
Administrative information
- Project Title
- Name, position and contact information of applicant
- Details of institution/unit i.e. details of research group and names of researchers
- Brief CVs of key individuals and if necessary a list of research studies previously undertaken.
Research project information (not exceeding 1500 words)
- Introduction
- Problem analysis
- Aims and objectives of the proposed study
- Conceptual framework and methodology (This is the most important part of the proposal and should be as detailed and as clear as possible.)
- Ethical issues
- Plan for Data analysis
- Plan for dissemination of research findings
- Expected outcome
- Expected utility of results
- Work plan
- Letter of support from PIs for the study
- Budget and timelines (projects are not expected to exceed one year, provide only a total budget at this stage).
Letters of intent that do not conform to the stated format will not be considered.
After the LOIs have been reviewed, PI’s will be contacted. Successful PIs will be provided with comments from the review to assist them in the development of their full proposal. Full proposals MUST be accompanied with draft tools. PIs are usually given about 6 weeks to submit the full proposals but the exact date will be provided to them.
Letters of Intent should be sent to:
The Administrator,
The Ghana-Dutch collaborative Programme for Research and Development,
Health Research Unit
P. O. Box GP 184
Accra
Fax: +233 21 226739
Tel: +233 21 681109
Email: the.administrator@hru-moh.org
Review procedures
- The Joint Programming Committee of the Ghanaian-Dutch Collaboration for Health Research and Development receives all project proposals through standardized applications. Dates for each activity are set by the JPC.
- The JPC members review initial LOIs. This is done individually. The Secretariat then collates the scores to determine those that may be short-listed for submission of full proposals.
- A Scientific Review Committee (SRC) then receives full proposals for review, ranking and selection for possible funding. The SRC is made up of seven renowned Scientists all of whom are active researchers. Two of them are from the Netherlands and the others from Ghana. They are selected based on their areas of expertise and the committee is thus multi-disciplinary covering basic bio-medical sciences, health policy, public health, social science, epidemiology and bio-statistics. For each proposal submitted, one scientist will be nominated as the primary reviewer and another, the secondary reviewer. As much as possible, the secretariat will match proposals with reviewers with relevant expertise or experience in the area under study. During the review process, the primary reviewer will give the initial assessment, followed by the secondary reviewer. After this all the other scientists will then make an input into the discussion. After a consensus is reached, the reviewers will score the proposal based on a set of criteria. Should there be a disagreement on any proposal, the SRC members will vote and the majority will carry the day. These scores will be collated and the results reviewed by the entire team. A cut of point will be determined and agreed upon at the meeting.
- After proposals are short listed by the SRC, the final approval will made by the JPC based on the scores, comments and recommendations of the scientific Review Committee. Some of the proposals that do not make the cut off point but have good ideas will go through a capacity building workshop.
- Proposals will be reviewed based on the follow criteria:
The main criteria for review of proposals shall be:
Scientific Merit : Clarity of objectives and whether objectives will address research questions, whether specific objectives are related to the general objectives
Methodology: Appropriateness of study design for research question, sampling, data collection techniques
Utilityof potential research finding/ Societal relevance: Utility within the Health Sector
Feasibility : of study within time proposed, appropriateness of budget for work proposed
Ethical Considerations- There will be no scoring of this criterion. Rather, this will simply be scored as having serious ethical issues of relevance that need to be addressed or no ethical issues of relevance.
Each item shall be scored on a scale of 1-5, thus giving a total score of 20.
- The JPC or SRC may call for expert opinion when necessary.
Mechanism for award of contract
Projects will be contracted out to principal investigators who are institutionally based. Funds for the projects will be paid into institutional accounts only.
Here the researches that have been commissioned so far in the 1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd, 4 th calls.
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