AP: I’m on the Conflict and Health work stream which I guess underpins all the work streams and is particularly focussing on research capacity building in conflict affected areas. So far my involvement has been around gathering evidence on what has worked in other contexts in terms of research capacity building. So we’re undertaking a literature review on research capacity building; we’re developing a conceptual framework for capacity building. Then over the next few months I’ll be conducting some expert opinion interviews with people that are involved in teaching conflict and health broadly speaking and whether they have best practices around research capacity building and if not what they would like to see being developed more in that sense.
Tell us about capacity building for mental health in the Middle East
PG: The overall project in Jordan is capacity building so training workshops and primary research delivery. We are going to do a multiphase project; in phase one we first are trying to explore the palliative care needs and the experience of people with advanced cancer in Jordan, including refugees. Also at the same time we will analyse some data from their registry, from the Ministry of Health in Jordan, so this is phase one of the study. Phase two we are going to validate our questionnaire called Integrated Palliative Care Outcome Scale, in short IPOS. Basically this questionnaire is a brief questionnaire to capture the multidimensional needs of palliative care patients and their families, not only focussing on physical needs but also psychosocial, spiritual and information communication needs. So this questionnaire is developed based on twenty years of work from The Cicely Saunders Institute so we want to translate and validate the questionnaire in the Jordanian population. After that we would do quality improvement, basically to scale up the implementation of outcome measures to make sure the outcome measures can be used widely in Jordan in order to improve the person-centred care and palliative care quality in Jordan.
AP: Contextualising as well, obviously we have evidence from other contexts and the areas we’re working in on this project are very specific and there’s not necessarily a guarantee that what works in other contexts translates. I think that’s going to be a key part of this project, figuring out how the specific political, economic, social context affects the way these different work streams can be implemented.
What education and training will we see moving forward?
AP: I’m already involved in teaching a conflict and health module here at King’s as part of the King’s Centre for Global Health and Health Partnerships. We’re really hoping that this project will inform that teaching but also that teaching can then be combined with some of the expertise that the other work streams have and develop some courses that can be delivered both here at King’s in person but ideally also online. And maybe even blended learning, so some online components and in person components, so that we are able to train the next generation of people that will be working in conflict and health, both here in the UK but also obviously in the Middle East and hopefully having some knowledge exchange between the two regions.
PG: Yes, exactly. In palliative care we have excellent Master and PhD programmes at The Cicely Saunders Institute. We encourage people from Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Palestine to come to join the institute and to learn evidence-based knowledge and practice with us. At the moment we have students across the globe; we really want to build up the next generation of future leaders for palliative care in Middle Eastern countries.
Why is a meeting like the one today so important?
AP: I’ve come on board this project in the last month and a half and yesterday and today has been invaluable in getting your head around who is involved, what people are doing, putting names to faces. I think I learned more yesterday than I have in the last three or four months about what the project is about so it was really helpful. It was just incredibly interesting to hear what other people are doing and learn more about the context as well.
PG: Yes, exactly. I joined the second Executive Board meeting in Jordan, this is the third one, so I really think it’s important for post-docs to join the big group and come to get a big picture of what’s going on within this project and even beyond. So something like I really enjoyed the discussion about the future, so looking into the future to make sure the capacity building is sustainable. So it’s a long-term relationship between the partnerships. So I really enjoyed the meeting yesterday and today, I learned so much from the team members and also the international advisory board members as well.
