Initiation of Cooperation for Public Health Research between African und German Scientists: Invitation for the Submission of Posters

The Fundo Nacional de Investigação (FNI) of the Republic of Mozambique in close collaboration with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) of the Republic of Zambia would like to invite researchers to engage in a scientific exchange in the field of public health. Examples are: public health topics related to infectious diseases or non-communicable diseases; availability, quality and utilisation of data for health monitoring and surveillance; mental health; population movement/migration; health policies and strategies to support regional drugs/therapeutics.

The partnering funding organisations would like to facilitate this exchange by means of the following:

• an invitation to submit, share and discuss research ideas in the form of posters
• followed by a virtual research symposium to take place between 16 and 18 March 2021.

Aim of the Initiative

The aim of the initiative is to identify joint research interests in the area of public health and connect with new collaboration partners. The partnering funding organisations are prepared to facilitate the follow-up conversations needed to prepare joint project proposals.

Eligibility

Researchers from the following countries are invited to participate in the initiative:
Botswana, Germany, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Qualified researchers (as a rule, those who hold a doctorate and have a track record in their respective research field) are invited to submit a poster. In addition, German applicants are required to fulfil the eligibility requirements of the DFG.

Poster Submission

In order to actively involve scientists as well as prepare and ensure a comprehensive virtual symposium, scientists are required to submit posters by 31 January 2021 to participate in the symposium. The poster should reflect the profile of the scientist or research group along with their expertise, experience and contact details. At the same time, the poster should highlight current research interests and ideas for joint research projects. Posters that exclusively show scientific results of previous research projects are out of scope and will not be considered. Please use the template provided for your poster.

The posters will be screened by the funding agencies for compliance with the eligibility requirements and scope of initiative before confirmation of participation and upload to a secure website. The posters will be accessible only to peers who have also submitted a poster and to the funding agencies as well as individual scientists who advise the funding agencies. Subsequently, the funding organisations will contact the scientists and inform them if and in what form a symposium can take place. This decision will largely depend on whether a significant number of posters have been received and whether their content can be expected to generate scientific added value in the context of a meeting.

In preparation for the virtual research symposium from 16 to 18 March 2021, we would like participants to view the posters carefully in order to familiarise themselves with the research profiles of the other scientists and identify potential collaboration partners prior to the meeting. In order to make best use of the poster platform, we would like to encourage you to get in touch with potential partners with regard to joint research projects as early as possible. Please make use of the contact details in the posters for this purpose.

Further Information

Poster Template:

• www.dfg.de/download/pdf/foerderung/internationales/ public_health_poster_template.rtf

Platform for the Poster Upload:

• https://tms.aloom.de/african-german-exchange

For questions on the collaboration with African countries, please contact:

• Lara Berens
  phone +49 228 885-2926
  lara.berens@dfg.de

For questions concerning DFG funding of projects in the field of Public Health, please contact:

• Dr. Barbara Schweitzer
  phone +49 228 885-2565
  barbara.schweitzer@dfg.de