About Agincourt MRC, South Africa
The Agincourt Health and Socio-Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS), located in rural northeast South Africa close to the Mozambique border, provides the foundation for the Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit of the Medical Research Council (MRC) and University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (the MRC/Wits-Agincourt Unit). Its origins lie in the university’s ‘Health Systems Development Unit’ that in the early 1990s focused on district health systems development, sub-district health centre networks and referral systems and training of clinically oriented primary health care nurses.
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CARTA's commitment to sustainability and scalability has yielded notable outcomes over the years as a result of the capacity-building interventions in its African partner universities. To ensure its interventions are integrated into institutional practices, CARTA has organized workshops in its partner institutions (referred to as CARTA Joint Trainings) as well as Trainer of Trainers (referred to as CARTA Joint ToTs) targeting faculty members in the institutions. These interventions include the PhD Training, Supervisory Skills, Grant Writing Workshop, and Institutional Support workshops.
As part of the rigorous mainstreaming efforts, the program has also been supporting its partner institutions to hold trainings and ToTs for their faculty members (referred to as Institutional Trainings and ToTs). Additionally, partner institutions have successfully integrated aspects of CARTA curricula into their research training programs and PhD training practices. These components are now included in their PhD training and have been or are in the process of being approved by the relevant governing bodies at these institutions.