Mentoring and Educational Tools to Advance Research and Care
Using mentorship and educational capacity-building tools for scientific research and care, Dana-Farber's SHE Center is training the best and brightest individuals within the MENA region as the next generation of leaders in health care and policy. Our critical goal is to mobilize local health care communities to take ownership and build a strong base in training, health care, and education.
Conferences and Workshops
As an initial step toward advocacy, communication, education, and training, the SHE team co-organized an HIV/AIDS conference in Tehran in 2012, with strong collaboration from UNAIDS headquarters in Iran and the Tehran University of Medical Sciences. This conference — with attendees from Afghanistan, Greece, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States — highlighted strengths and gaps in HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. It also sparked interest among faculty and students at Iran's Isfahan University of Medical Sciences and Shiraz University of Medical Sciences to join our future collaborative efforts.
The Tehran Conference was the starting point in recognizing the needs of Iranian researchers for collecting and distributing their newest findings. Since then, we have conducted a series of retreats, science writing workshops, and laboratory best-practices workshops in several MENA countries.
New Efforts Going Forward
Professional Training (in-country)
Training for physicians, nurses, researchers, and educators will improve their ability to provide high-quality services and educate the next generation in their respective fields. A recent SHE Center pilot project offered a laboratory-training workshop to researchers and the Ministry of Health in Tehran, Iran. The workshop's goal was to standardize the national viral load determination for HIV-1.
Upcoming trainings will initially take place in Iran, Jordan, and Morocco; these can include patient history data collection, breast and ovarian cancer care, bioethics, and the delivery of specific therapeutic protocols. The SHE Center will also provide health services management and leadership education, since administrative management and leadership will be critical to trainees' success.
International Visiting Scholars Program (at Dana-Farber and Longwood Medical Area affiliates)
Our Visiting Scholars Program empowers and engages students, nurses, physicians, and scientists. The Program will continue to provide mentorship and real-life experience for trainees from the MENA region. Prior scholars — selected in collaboration with regional Ministries of Health and in-country academic institutions — have been highly successful after leaving this Program. For example, after training in the United States, one Iranian scholar became the first AIDS fellow of the Imam Khomeini Hospital; and a U.S. student who trained with Dana-Farber in Iran became a Fulbright Fellow, studying global health development.
The major initiatives of our Visiting Scholars Program are:
- Basic and clinical science mentored research: This program brings promising early- to mid-career MENA-region researchers to Dana-Farber for mentored research. Goals are to enhance research, organizational, and research management skills, and to create connections for collaborations.
- Clinical practice observation study: During clinical practice observation studies, mid-career physicians and promising medical students shadow expert clinicians and oncologists at Dana-Farber, to enable up-to-date observation of technologies and protocols that they can share with MENA colleagues. We choose scholars who will be instrumental in advancing collaborative research, particularly in the areas of oncology (tissue banking/clinical trials) and infectious disease (HIV/HPV).
Skill Set Workshops (in-country)
The goal of these workshops is to promote career advancement for students and early- and mid-career health professionals (particularly females) in research and clinical care disciplines. Workshops will focus on non-experimental skills such as data analysis, scientific writing, CV writing, grant writing, and oral presentation of data.