Chamas for Change Team Engages in Research Training
Tremendous successes have been achieved through the Chamas for Change program activities over the past 12 years of implementation. However, the dissemination of findings from the program has been limited to a few formal reports submitted to the respective funders, the AMPATH Consortium and county officials.
The Chamas for Change program brings together pregnant and parenting women for health education, peer support and microfinance opportunities. There are currently 659 chamas in five counties with more than 7,000 women participating. The program boasts large data sets but very few scholarly manuscripts have been developed to the publication level. Publishing ideas and research findings remains invaluable and vital for any research project.
Researchers from AMPATH Chamas for Change, IDRC Women Rise team and Moi University participating in a 2-day pre-manuscript workshop to develop and build their capacity and competencies in manuscript writing.
To address this and related challenges, the Chamas for Change team engaged the AMPATH Qualitative Research Core (AQRC) in partnership with the Moi University School of Information Sciences to conduct a 2-day pre-manuscript writing workshop in Eldoret.
To enhance inclusivity and collaboration in the knowledge dissemination process, the Chamas for Change team incorporated the IDRC Chamas Women Rise study Co-PI Decision Maker, representing the County Department of Health.
A slide on the peer review process was shared during the workshop.
The workshop was a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for research manuscript development. The entire writing process was discussed in depth including the significance of publishing; manuscript peer review process; manuscript structure; writing a compelling abstract; stages of research paper writing; reporting guidelines and checklists; ethical procedures; data organization; effective writing; and addressing reviewers’ comments.
The workshop was an invaluable preparatory session for the Chamas for Change team, which is now ready to draft scholarly manuscripts. The team took up the challenge to foster further collaboration, provide constructive criticism of each other's work, and look for more opportunities to sharpen emerging writing skills. All participants committed to drafting a concept note ahead of the upcoming weeklong manuscript writing workshop where the focus will be hands-on writing of specific papers to be deliverables at the end of the engagement.
As interdisciplinary research and collaboration continue to evolve, the capacity building of middle-level researchers is pivotal in expanding the pool of early career researchers and contributing towards high-quality research and publications.
“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” --Khalil Gibran (Quote from workshop)