The NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery
Improving surgical outcomes through collaborative research
Our aim is to build surgical research capacity through education and training. Our Education Centre provides a one-stop-shop for all our education and training resources, courses and learning materials. All our resources have been specifically developed in the context of surgical research and are freely available to researchers all around the world. Subjects cover a broad range of topics including Health Economics, Data Management, Research Management, Community Engagement and Involvement, Statistics, and Qualitative research. Through the Education Centre we aim to equip the whole research team with the necessary skills to conduct high quality research.
Professor Dion Morton, Co-Director of the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery (GSU), introduces our surgical research capacity building programme.
Our faculty brings together surgeons and topic specific experts to develop training materials that are tailored to surgical research. Drawn from our network of research hubs across the GSU, the faculty ensure all our training materials are relevant to surgical researchers all around the world.
Click the blue heading boxes to meet the working groups led by our Faculty.
Chaired by Dr Laura Martinez from the GSU Mexico hub, the Research Managers group are developing training for professional research managers.
Dr Deidre Kruger from the GSU Statistics hub leads a team of expert statistician to develop data analysis and statistics training specifically for those conducting surgical research study.
Dr Napoleon Bellua Sam, Head of the GSU Ghana Data Centre, leads the Data Management group.
Why, and what, do surgeons need to know about Health Economics? Professor Risikat Dauder from the Health Economics section of the GSU hub in Lagos, Nigeria develop explore health economics in surgery.
Professor Ismail Lawani from the GSU Hub in Benin leads a team of Community Engagement and Involvement officers from across all our hubs, ensuring that patients are at the heart of all our research.
Led by Dr Gagendeep Kaur from the GSU India hub, the Qualitative Research group provide training materials to aid surgical researchers in exploring topics beyond the numbers.
Our Faculty develop training delivered through three key programmes.
By selecting content in the GSU Education Centre, researchers can tailor training to meet their own individual needs and level of experience.
Emerging Leaders Programme
The Emerging Leaders Programme provides training materials for new surgical research leaders, aiming to provide increased research leadership capacity and expertise.
In addition to the content in the GSU Education Centre we are also supporting the development of post-graduate education programmes in partner hubs. A PhD in Clinical Sciences is now offered by the University for Development Studies, Tamale (Ghana Hub), and a new MSc Global Surgery is under development at the University of Lagos (Nigeria Hub).
Fully funded fellowships for online Post graduate degrees at the University of Edinburgh are also offered to students in hub countries.
Professional Research Management Programme
Professional Management has been identified as a key requirement for capacity strengthening in LMICs. The Management Training Programme has been designed to meet this need, providing bespoke training for clinical research management teams and an infrastructure to support research and knowledge transfer.
Executive Leadership Programme
Sustainable research leadership capacity is created through the Executive Leadership Programme. This programme supports our current Hub Directors and Deputy Directors with leadership training packages designed support all aspects of leading national and international research programmes. Hub-to-hub exchange fellowships strengthen the exchange of knowledge and best practice across all hubs.
The GlobalSurg Data Centre aims to give our collaborators better access to the datasets collected during our international cohort studies. The centre is an online home for the collection, analysis, visulation and reporting of data in our Global Surgery projects. We hope to share data to establish best practice, and ultimately, to improve outcomes for surgical patients worldwide.
At the GlobalSurg Data Centre you can see real time updates on data entry from our current study – at the moment GlobalSurg 3 is collecting data on patients undergoing surgery for breast, gastric and colon cancers. Visit the GS3 in numbers page to see live updates on how many countries are registered to take part, how many teams are actively collecting data and how many patient records have been entered into the study.
As we complete cohort studies we will add applications that allow visualisation and interaction with the complete dataset (please be reassured that we not allow access to patient or hospital level data) – you can see an example of this by visiting the GS2 data explorer and GS3 data explorer. Using this new application, any variable can be compared with any other variable – click the ‘Data’ tab to begin exploring!
We will also be blogging here about all things data – tips on data analysis, how to best present data – if you have a data-related topic you like us to cover, let us know by contacting us!
Bringing together surgeons, researchers and policy makers to set the local research agenda according to patient need in LMIC and ensuring all patients have the opportunity to take part in our research.