HPSR Teaching Blogs

The website has not only had a facelift to refresh its look, but has also been reshaped to focus more on the teaching of health policy and systems research (HPSR).

As many of you will know, CHEPSAA (Consortium for Health Policy and Systems Analysis in Africa) was a project of 7 African and 4 European universities that sought to build African capacity to produce and use HPSR. CHEPSAA implemented a number of well-known initiatives – most notably its assessment of HPSR capacity needs and assets in Africa and the CHEPSAA Emerging Leaders Programme - but its biggest impact was in teaching where it developed two open access master’s-level courses, built capacity in curriculum development and stimulated new curriculum development in a number of universities. 

When CHEPSAA’s project funding ended in 2015, we therefore decided to continue with the website, but to shift its focus more to HPSR teaching.

Rest assured that key materials from the past – most importantly our open access courses and the archive of the CHEPSAA project – will remain available on the website. However, we also have exciting plans to develop new content over time. These plans include:

• A monthly blog, written by colleagues from around the world, to report on topical HPSR teaching events, discuss key concepts in HPSR, highlight important principles of HPSR curriculum development, and share good practice in HPSR teaching. You can subscribe to this blog by clicking on Stay Connected;
• Adding lots more teaching resources. We invite you to contact us about resources that you use in your own teaching and that you would like to share with the HPSR community via this website; and
• Creating interactive spaces that will enable all of us to discuss topics we feel passionate about. We are especially excited to pilot a feature through which you will be able to “ask an expert” for advice related to HPSR teaching.

We therefore hope that this new website will be a home for fellow HPSR educators, researchers and students from Africa and beyond, as well as a place where colleagues will be able to share interesting ideas and resources.

With the formal end of the CHEPSAA project and the creation of this new website has also come a name-change – barely noticeable, but very important. There is no longer a reason to restrict CHEPSAA to its original 11 consortium partners and so we have changed our name to the Collaboration for Health Policy and Systems Analysis in Africa. Through this name-change we hope to signal that CHEPSAA is open to engagement with anyone interested in HPSR and that we welcome your contributions, ideas and materials in addition to the resources and ideas that we plan to contribute to build the community of HPSR educators and scholars.

One of our key links is currently with the Collaboration for Health Systems Analysis and Innovation (CHESAI), a sister-network based in South Africa. In fact, this new website would not have been possible without the support of CHESAI.

We hope to forge many more relationships like this in future and will certainly be reaching out to you and opening up new channels of communication. We would also love to hear from you via our Twitter account (@hpsa_africa), our e-mail address (hpsa.africa@gmail .com) or the spaces provided on this website.

The CHEPSAA coordinators