EASST’s Meaningful Mentorship has Far-Reaching Effects
How CEGA’s Global Networks programs has impacted fellows’ research and career trajectories
CEGA Communications Intern, Yevanit Reschechtko (UC Berkeley MDP ‘22), speaks with EASST Fellows Damazo Kadengye and Jonathan Izudi about how the program helped advance their careers and build capacity for improved scientific evaluation in public health.
CEGA’s Global Networks programs turn 10 this year. Over the past decade, we’ve held the ethos that simply producing rigorous research is not enough — in order to be impactful, research must also be inclusive. We have to pay attention to who is producing the knowledge, and how it will be used. An inclusive and diverse research team is valuable in and of itself, and at CEGA, we believe it results in more credible, useful findings.
Since 2011, CEGA’s East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) Collaborative (supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the National Institutes of Health) has worked towards this goal by training 34 East African researchers in impact evaluation through visiting fellowships at UC Berkeley. These fellows have subsequently trained over 1,000 students, faculty, and policymakers in East Africa through small “catalyst grants’’ awarded upon return to their home institution. From the beginning, EASST has prioritized deep, meaningful investments in capacity rather than shorter, one-off trainings. In the past few years, we have better aligned these “secondary” catalyst trainings with our broader goals of inclusion and policy impact discussed above to ensure that EASST’s investments in academic leaders ultimately reach their institutions and communities in a meaningful way.
2017 EASST fellow Damazo Kadengye successfully championed this catalyst model by conducting a one-week training for researchers at local Ugandan Universities and competitively selecting a small group of motivated researchers for a year of mentorship. The mentorship between Damazo and trainee Jonathan Izudi exemplifies the far-reaching effects of such training models.
Jonathan was one of four mentees who continued to work with Damazo throughout the year following the initial training, during which he co-authored a paper with Damazo and CEGA-affiliated professor Sandra McCoy (UC Berkeley), who had served as Damazo’s mentor during his EASST fellowship. Jonathan has since been accepted into the 2020–2021 EASST Fellows cohort. We asked them a few questions about how the EASST program has helped them build capacity for impact evaluation in their own research as well as across their networks and the institutions where they work.
Damazo, what training needs did you hope to address when you launched your catalyst grant project in Ugandan Universities in 2018?
Damazo: I think one of the biggest challenges I saw was the lack of skilled human resources. Not that ideas are lacking, but people don’t have the capacity to conduct impact evaluation. From my own experience, I passed my first and second degrees, but it wasn’t until I had the opportunity to work at the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] in Kampala that I had a chance to really go beyond the theory, beyond traditional academics and translate that knowledge to real life.
Could you tell us more about your training model and the impact on selected mentees?
D: When I was thinking about designing the program, the mentorship aspect was really important to me. I said, look, it’s better to have a deeper impact, even if it means focusing only on two or three people, because that is what leads to capacity building. And then those people would be in a position to conduct their own impact evaluation research and even train and mentor others.
Could you talk more about your experience working on the paper you published with Professor McCoy and Jonathan Izudi in the Journal of Midwifery?
D: Of the 25 people who originally took part in the week long training, Jonathan was one of four that we selected for continued mentorship. Before joining the training, Jonathan was working toward his PhD and he had all of the data for a paper that he was writing, but he was wondering which analytical approach to use.
Sandra McCoy and I advised Jonathan, who did his own analysis and developed his own code. We continued to guide him until the draft was ready for submission and was eventually published in the Journal of Midwifery. And he was able to use the knowledge he gained in the training and over the course of the mentorship to publish second and third paper later on as well, where he acknowledged the training and the data analysis skills he gained.
Jonathan, what impact did the initial mentorship with Damazo and Sandra have on your research and professional work?
Jonathan: I was able to hone my skills and theory from the training, and apply those skills for my PhD work. I published two papers with impact evaluation approaches. Now, the institution where I study (Mbarara University of Science and Technology) is trying to expand its existing program of healthcare evaluation. We have a Master of Public Health program and we are thinking that the training and skills I’ll gain from the EASST Fellowship will allow us to redesign a course incorporating those methods.
Why do you think it is important for researchers in your field of public health to acquire training in impact evaluation methods?
J: There is no public health without a focus on impact evaluation. Public health programs are meant to improve peoples’ health and prevent disease, but it’s hard for practitioners to recognize that there might be programs and policies that are detrimental. Unless practitioners and researchers have the skills and formal training in impact evaluation, we won’t have the evidence needed to know how programs are actually impacting peoples’ health.
How did the mentorship experience help you connect with a broader network of researchers in the field of impact evaluation and quantitative research both in East Africa and the US?
J: The mentorship opened a lot of doors for me. I got to know established researchers in impact evaluation and I was able to participate in the 2018 EASST summit, where I met with EASST fellows both past and present. It helped me get to know professors like Sandra McCoy at Berkeley and other researchers in East Africa, to build a strong network.
The training also led me to meet Damazo, who has given me ongoing career guidance and been an important collaborator in my work. And now looking forward to my EASST fellowship, I’m excited to hone my skills in impact evaluation, to prevent infectious diseases and promote effective healthcare policies. I’m also looking to become a more established researcher in this field. This kind of hands-on training is really a life changing opportunity.
