CHEPSAA Archive

From 2011 to 2015, the Consortium for Health Policy and Systems Analysis in Africa (CHEPSAA) sought to increase sustainable African capacity to produce and use health policy and systems research (HPSR). CHEPSAA was a partnership between 7 African and 4 European universities from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. Its key impacts on African capacity in HPSR, and the field of HPSR in general, included:

• New knowledge on African HPSR capacity development needs and assets, as well as new tools that others can use in future assessments of capacity assets and needs;
• Building the profile of HPSR - internationally, regionally and with policy makers and other educators in the CHEPSAA partner countries;
• Supporting the organisational development of CHEPSAA partners by, among other things, increasing the number and skills of people working in HPSR, helping to develop HPSR teaching programmes, raising curriculum development awareness, improving HPSR practitioners’ profile within their own universities, regionally and internationally, and stimulating networking and engagement nationally and internationally;
• Contributing to the development of a new generation of HPSR scholars and educators, especially through the CHEPSAA Emerging Leaders Programme. This programme included 26 participants from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania;
• Changing the landscape of HPSR teaching by developing two open access courses (Introduction to Complex Health Systems and Introduction to Health Policy Systems and Research), which complemented an existing open access course (Introduction to Health Policy Analysis);
• Building skills in teaching and curriculum design, which have been shared more widely within CHEPSAA’s country-level networks, and which can now be applied to strengthen HPSR teaching programmes; and
• Initiating a planning process for a pan-African Doctorate in Public Health programme.

A key CHEPSAA activity was the creation of a resource website for all those working in HPSR. After the end of CHEPSAA’s project funding, this initial website was redesigned and refocused to become the current website with its focus on HPSR+A teaching.

CHEPSAA’s members were:

• Health Policy and Systems Division, University of Cape Town
• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Institute of Development Studies, University of Dar es Salaam
• School of Public Health, University of Ghana
• Tropical Institute of Community Health, Great Lakes University of Kisumu
• College of Medicine, University of Nigeria, Enugu
• School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape
• Centre for Health Policy, University of the Witwatersrand
• Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development, University of Leeds
• Karolinska Institutet
• Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, University of Basel