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“It takes more than a fellowship program”: reflections on capacity strengthening for health systems research in sub-Saharan Africa

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Health Services Research, December 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (94th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (96th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
4 news outlets
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2 X users

Citations

dimensions_citation
31 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
139 Mendeley
Title
“It takes more than a fellowship program”: reflections on capacity strengthening for health systems research in sub-Saharan Africa
Published in
BMC Health Services Research, December 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12913-017-2638-9
Pubmed ID
Authors

Chimaraoke O. Izugbara, Caroline W. Kabiru, Djesika Amendah, Zacharie Tsala Dimbuene, Hermann Pythagore Pierre Donfouet, Esso-Hanam Atake, Marie-Gloriose Ingabire, Stephen Maluka, Joyce N. Mumah, Matilu Mwau, Mollyne Ndinya, Kenneth Ngure, Estelle M. Sidze, Charles Sossa, Abdramane Soura, Alex C. Ezeh

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) experiences an acute dearth of well-trained and skilled researchers. This dearth constrains the region's capacity to identify and address the root causes of its poor social, health, development, and other outcomes. Building sustainable research capacity in SSA requires, among other things, locally led and run initiatives that draw on existing regional capacities as well as mutually beneficial global collaborations. This paper describes a regional research capacity strengthening initiative-the African Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship (ADDRF) program. This Africa-based and African-led initiative has emerged as a practical and tested platform for producing and nurturing research leaders, strengthening university-wide systems for quality research training and productivity, and building a critical mass of highly-trained African scholars and researchers. The program deploys different interventions to ensure the success of fellows. These interventions include research methods and scientific writing workshops, research and reentry support grants, post-doctoral research support and placements, as well as grants for networking and scholarly conferences attendance. Across the region, ADDRF graduates are emerging as research leaders, showing signs of becoming the next generation of world-class researchers, and supporting the transformations of their home-institutions. While the contributions of the ADDRF program to research capacity strengthening in the region are significant, the sustainability of the initiative and other research and training fellowship programs on the continent requires significant investments from local sources and, especially, governments and the private sector in Africa. The ADDRF experience demonstrates that research capacity building in Africa is possible through innovative, multifaceted interventions that support graduate students to develop different critical capacities and transferable skills and build, expand, and maintain networks that can sustain them as scholars and researchers.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 2 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 139 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 139 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 25 18%
Student > Master 23 17%
Student > Ph. D. Student 12 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 8 6%
Other 7 5%
Other 27 19%
Unknown 37 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 27 19%
Social Sciences 19 14%
Nursing and Health Professions 16 12%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 7 5%
Business, Management and Accounting 5 4%
Other 19 14%
Unknown 46 33%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 34. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 September 2020.
All research outputs
#1,000,634
of 23,015,156 outputs
Outputs from BMC Health Services Research
#260
of 7,706 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#24,956
of 439,412 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Health Services Research
#4
of 125 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,015,156 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,706 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.8. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 439,412 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 125 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.