EIPM Training at Sylhet

 December 9, 2018 (Sunday)

The training workshop started with welcoming the participants and introduction of all attendees by Dr. ATM Iqbal Anwar (Scientist, and Project Director, icddr,b) followed by sharing training objectives. Afterwards, Dr Mohammad Yousuf delivered his welcome speech as the Chief Guest. In his speech, he thanked SHARE project of icddr,b to take such timely initiative to organize this training for health managers on evidence informed health policy. He also heightened the importance of quality research and importance of evidence informed health policy making in Bangladesh. Dr. ATM Iqbal Anwar highlighted the importance of the workshop as an collaborative effort of SHARE project of icddr,b.

The lectures ensured interactive participation of the attendees and covered the following topics to set the base for the knowledge on evidence informed health policy:

The session on Health Systems and Health Policy Making was quite interactive and vibrant in terms of not only the challenges shared by facilitators but also by the participants in their own organograms. Moreover, they shared that, through the sessions on the qualitative and quantitative research where they could gain very basic idea about research methodology will help them to be interested to research projects in the upcoming future.

Day 2: December 10, 2018 (Monday)

The 2^nd day of the training session started with a recap -facilitated by Dr. Iqbal Anwar. After the short recap, scheduled sessions were conducted by respective facilitators as followed:

Sessions on Implementation research and Non-Communicable Diseases were highly praised by the participants for the excellent delivery of the presenters with real life examples. Participants explored their own facility status measured by different indicators using the DHIS2 tool in the session using their devices and During Urban Health session, participants actively shared their experience and opinion regarding Urban Health Service Delivery and Governance.

Day 3: December 11, 2018 (Tuesday)

After the short recap on previous day’s lectures conducted by Dr Iqbal Anwar, scheduled sessions were conducted by respective facilitators as mentioned below:

Everyone was extremely encouraged and motivated by the presentation on Manpura Upazilla Health Complex, Bhola by Dr Mahmudur Rashid, the innovative health systems model tested in Chowgacha with community participation by Dr. Emdadul Haque. Some shared the inspiration to work with the proven model of community engagement in Chowgacha to improve their own hospitals and facilities. Participants also thoroughly enjoyed the hands-on training on Literature Search and performed with exuberant. They curiously searched for different scientific articles on various topics and themes and also tried searching renowned scientists’ articles by author name.

A short closing ceremony followed by certificate distribution was arranged at the end of training sessions. Professor Dr. Nasima Sultana, ADG (Admin), DGHS chaired the closing ceremony. Dr. Md. Anisur Rahman, Additional Director, Sylhet Division, Dr Himangshu Lal Roy, Civil Surgeon, Sylhet, were present in the closing ceremony.  All the participants were highly impressed with the training. They stated that as health manager, the learning from this training will be very much beneficial for them in future planning and decision making. They also mentioned that the session on dhis-2 was quite eye-opening and it would help them to reduce dependency on the Statisticians. They requested the organizer to arrange refresher training in near future.

Dr. Md. Anisur Rahman and Dr. Himangshu Lal Roy (Civil Surgeon, Sylhet) both thanked the organizers for organizing the training .They expressed that these practical experiences (Chowgacha model, Manpura model etc) from our own health systems will encourage other health mangers to establish themselves as an icon in respective fields. It was expected that initiation of new idea generation regarding solving local level problems will be started from here.

Prof. Nasima Sultana expressed her gratitude to the PMR unit of DGHS and SHARE project of icddr,b for organizing the training. Additionally, she mentioned the importance of this training in current context of the health systems of Bangladesh. She mentioned the continuous development in health sector of Bangladesh.

Pre- and –post-test assessment:

Pre- and post-test of the EIPM training was conducted to explore the change in attainment of knowledge in participants. Total score was 20 and duration was 10 minutes. Average marks in the pre-test was 48% and in the post test 60%.

Course evaluation:

At the end of the course, an evaluation was conducted to perceive opinion of participants.