The HIA4SD project

Example Principle 3: Specify roles and responsibilities

What was the project about?

The HIA4SD Project was a 6-year trans- and interdisciplinary research for development project that examined how structural determinants contribute to unequal public health outcomes in industrial settings in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique, and Tanzania. T

How was the partnership structured?

The project was implemented in 2017-2022 by a research consortium consisting of four partner institutions in Africa (Burkina Faso, Institute de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé; Ghana, University of Health and Allied Sciences; Mozambique, Centro de Investigaçao em Saúde de Manhiça; and Tanzania, Ifakara Health Institute) and two from Switzerland (Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Centre for Development and Cooperation). The project was funded through the Research for Development (r4d) programme, a joint funding initiative of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

The consortium consisted of 7 PhD students, 6 postdocs and a dozen senior researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from public health and epidemiology over political sciences to social sciences and human geography. Hence, the consortium was not only diverse in terms of the nationalities of the researchers, but also in terms of disciplinary backgrounds and level of seniority.

What concrete steps did you take to specify roles and responsibilities together?

To ensure effective collaboration across 5 countries with a highly diverse team, specific roles and responsibilities were not only jointly defined at the beginning of the project, but rather considered an evolving concept throughout the project implementation. At the proposal development stage, the main applicants of the project took advantage of the opportunity provided by the project funder to attend a proposal development workshop in Switzerland. On the one hand, this was essential to jointly refine the research objectives and methods outlined in the preproposal. On the other hand, the workshop enabled consortium members to become familiar with their potential future research partners, including their strengths and weaknesses. This also established the basis for assigning responsibilities to each of the 10 work streams/packages of the HIA4SD to selected senior consortium members.

What specific methods, tools, or processes were employed?

Based on a solid understanding of the various research components of the project, combined with clarified roles and responsibilities, a budgeting sheet was developed with the agreed-upon staff positions, research funds, multi-stakeholder meetings, training courses, and associated logistics. In collaboration with the finance departments of each consortium member institution, all partners developed their individual budgets, taking into account salary costs and local prices, which obviously vary across countries. This set the basis for the subsequent fair and transparent contracting process, which was completed prior to the official launch of the HIA4SD Project.

A project kick-off meeting was held shortly after the project's official start. Since the contracting and recruitment of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows were completed prior to the project's start, the complete consortium, including both junior and senior researchers, had the opportunity to get to know each other and jointly develop (i) the communication strategy of the project, including internal and external communication, (ii) define the supervision committee (a combination of senior researchers from the north and south ) of each of the 6 PhD students, (iii) agree on shared authorship rules and (iv) jointly develop a workplan for the first phase of the project.