Fernando Rubinstein: Helping to build research capacity

My name is Fernando Rubinstein, I recently joined The Global Health Network as a new training manager.

The project is mainly providing free open access resources to strengthen research capacity building to the world, mainly tailored to low- and middle-income countries where formal research training is not that accessible because of cost, because of geography, because of other things that need to be strengthened from an organisation such as this one which will allow access to resources free of charge through the platform, offering a diversity of training resources.

There were many, some launching new projects and new courses on the TGHN platform. One is the WHO ethics course, which is a seven-module course, a community engagement course with NIHR, the new post-graduate diploma programme which is the first online programme from the University of Oxford providing research skills to researchers in the world, completely online so they do not have to travel and they do not have expenses. It's a much better way to guarantee more equity in training. And there is a new project, the Wellcome project, funded by Wellcome to set up a research network in Latin America in which six different countries of Latin America are tasked with the development of capacity building activities to strengthen research areas in the countries in Latin America, both in general and specifically devoted to some of the priority diseases in the region.

One of the main challenges is the limited access that many people and countries have to formal training resources. This is something that TGHN does greatly in terms of providing those resources. But probably the main challenge is obtaining funding from governments, from agencies, from the industry to sustain this over time.

More than for patients, it's for research communities and for communities themselves because trying to support the research training, the research capacity building for research groups in different countries able to answer their own questions, connecting this huge knowledge sharing hub through the platform is what makes the great difference for those different groups that do not have access to other ways of training and research.

This is why this is so important, to be able to provide resources to people, groups and communities which otherwise do not have access to it, in a way that's free of charge, trying to work collaboratively with the whole world, with different institutions, researchers with more experience. That is what makes a real difference. And why it should be funded, well mainly it should be sustained to be able to maintain this great task over time, to really benefit the research capacity of those countries and groups which are more limited, to be trained in other ways.

This interview was recorded in July 2024.