Asian Regional Capacity Development for Research on Social Determinants of Health (ARCADE RSDH)

This project will add new research training capacity at low and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, for promoting research on social determinants of health (RSDH). The focus is doctoral and post doctoral training, institutional strengthening for education, financial and administrative research management, and LMICs-based network building.

Novel capacity building approaches will reduce brain drain, be more climate friendly and encourage gender equity with LMICs-based training. Internet mounted downloadable modules in related disciplines, like epidemiology, anthropology, economic methods, etc., will support excellent interdisciplinary courses. Addressing social determinants of health and tackling health inequity are research intensive, incremental improvement to measurement and understanding, implementation and evaluation. Therefore LMICs need to grow their own capacity to strengthen RSDH: interdisciplinary, rigorous and relevant.

ARCADE-RSDH will support evidence informed decision making by producing a stream of well-trained young RSDH scientists, the next generation of health system leaders and researchers in LMICs. Activities will be aimed at individuals, institutions and the network. Tongji Medical College of HUST (TJMC, China) and CBCI Society of Medical Education (SJNAHS, India) are two strong Asian Universities with RSDH focus. They will act as hubs in a network including TJMC, SJNAHS, Beijing Normal University (BNU, China), Zhejiang University (ZJU, China), Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR, India), Ruxmaniben Deepchand Gardi Medical College (UCTH, India) and initially Sultan Qaboos University (SQU, Oman) and Hanoi Medical University (HMU, Vietnam), working with strong European RSDH institutions (Karolinska Institutet KI, Sussex University Institute for Development Studies IDS and University of Tampere UTA). This region-wide approach will draw skills, resources and students to a new LMICs-based RSDH capacity development network.