The World Health Organization, HQ and Regional office for the Eastern Mediterranean, conducted a workshop on the development of research proposals for implementation research for a team of scientists from academic institutions and programme managers from the ministry of health and population, Egypt, from 23 to 27 June 2012.

Participants were from 6 institutions from Egypt, Morocco and Sudan, to build capacity in research proposal development.

Implementation research in child health is research which aims at improving population access to efficacious child health interventions, by developing practical solutions to common problems which are critical for the implementation of these interventions. This research therefore addresses barriers to the delivery of interventions and, as such, is a key priority for child public health programmes.

This activity follows a Regional consultation held in Cairo on 11-12 July 2011 which identified priorities in implementation research to scale up newborn and child health interventions to reduce child mortality in Egypt.

Following a call for letters of intent for implementation research in these priority areas after the consultation, a few institutions which had submitted them were eventually selected and invited to this workshop to develop the full research proposal.

The proposals developed concern community-based behavioural change interventions to improve family care-seeking practices and utilization of health care services for sick newborns and the effect of e-health —a tele-approach to continuing medical education—on the performance of health care providers managing sick under-five children in remote areas.

Teams from the ministry and academic institutions worked jointly in the preparation of each proposal, relying on the successful partnerships built during the implementation of the Integrated management of child health (IMCI) strategy in Egypt.

The proposals are expected to be submitted for funding.