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    COMDIS-HSD awarded £2m extension by DFID

    COMDIS-HSD team members at our 2017 annual partner meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal in July


    We are delighted to announce that COMDIS-HSD has been awarded a £2 million extension by the Department for International Development (DFID). This will run until December 2018. Our research will continue to focus on health service delivery for communicable diseases, and in particular on:

    1. tuberculosis: continuing our work to develop a psychological support package to improve the metal wellbeing of patients with depression during TB and/or HIV treatment;
    2. neglected tropical diseases (NTDs): developing tools and processes to help primary healthcare staff detect, manage and record NTDs;
    3. hepatitisː working with public hospitals in the Punjab to enhance diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis C and improve vaccination practices and coverage for hepatitis B;
    4. urban health: enhancing the capacity and skills of urban healthcare workers to deliver basic healthcare services to some of the poorest populations in Nepal.

    We will continue to work closely with our 5 long-standing NGO partners: ARK Foundation in Bangladesh, ASD in Pakistan, HERD in Nepal, Malaria Consortium in Ethiopia and Good Shepherd Hospital in Swaziland, as well as in-country Ministries of Health and other relevant stakeholders. James Newell, Co-director of COMDIS-HSD, said: ‘The funding allows us to move forward with a number of exciting new studies, building on our growing body of evidence about what interventions and approaches work best to improve health service delivery in low- and middle-income countries.
    ‘We will continue to work hand-in-hand with ministries of health and national programmes using a range of methods, including our very successful embedded approach. We will also be encouraging our partners to capitalise on the considerable experience they have built up over the 11-year lifespan of COMDIS and COMDIS-HSD and collaborate even more closely to develop their new studies and share knowledge and skills.’
    In the extension we are also hoping to formalise a new collaboration with fellow DFID consortium, Research in Gender and Ethics (RinGs). We will be working closely with RinGs colleagues to build gender sensitivity into our own organisational processes, as well as embedding it in our project and research design.
    In particular, we will be using our research to understand more about how gender intersects with other aspects of inequity such as age, ethnicity and class.

    Zunayed Al Azdi of ARK Foundation explains research uptake plans for our study into the mental health needs of patients undergoing treatment for MDR-TB in Bangladesh


    Taking a stand: the COMDIS-HSD take to the floor to learn about pathways to impact in their research


    Voting with our feet: a cross on the pavement serves as a handy visual aid when it comes to understanding transformative change during a session on gender and intersectionality


    Tweeting every step of the way