Учебный курс по проведению оперативных исследований, Каунас, Литва, ноябрь 2009 г.

This ten-day course was organized by WHO/Europe and hosted by Kaunas Medical University, whose teachers led sessions and facilitated groups. The course was held in Russian. Its objectives were:

to coordinate work of managers and researchers and to help them work in teams to develop a joint OR proposal;
to acquaint managers and researchers with research technologies: field studies, cost analysis, etc.;
to improve participants’ skills in writing project proposals.

Each of the five participating countries – Armenia, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan – was asked to send two managers and two researchers to the course. The course included detailed plenary training sessions on the key concepts of OR, an overview of sexual and reproductive health and current problems, and specific aspects of OR such as the roles of managers, presentations, useful examples, preparations, design and dissemination. The participants were then divided into 10 groups, each with a researcher and a manager. These groups, with the help of facilitators, had to prepare the drafts of OR proposals during the course. The drafts were presented in plenary at the end of the course.

An evaluation and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the course was carried out.

Project proposals

Project proposals were developed on the following topics:

increasing the participation of women in a cervix cancer prevention programme through the development of a new system of information (Armenia);
active management of the third period of labour (Armenia);
ways to decrease hypertension conditions during labour at primary health care level in Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan);
ways to decrease obstetric haemorrhage in Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan);
the influence of medical students’ training on questions of reproductive health on the status of their reproductive health (Russian Federation);
the development of an effective training programme for teenagers in reproductive health (Russian Federation);
changing habits on post-abortion contraception through training health care specialists (Tajikistan);
decreasing the level of sexually transmitted diseases (Tajikistan);
decreasing cases of obstetric haemorrhage in Turkmenistan through active management of the third period of labour (Turkmenistan).

As soon as these projects were finalized and agreed upon with the respective ministries of health they were to be submitted to WHO headquarters for expert review. If selected, implementation would be funded by the Human Reproduction Programme. Other countries from central Europe have requested a similar training course, and some were planned for 2010–2011. The working language would be English.