Nawangwe who was speaking to the press shortly after launching a new strategic plan for the school said that the institution which will now be autonomous has been contributing forty per cent of all the research the university conducts but often faces hurdles when handling grants where funders do not necessarily want to deal with the College of Health Sciences under which it has been operating.
Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) is to become an independent institution come January, Vice Chancellor Barnabas Nawangwe has revealed.
Nawangwe says that the move is meant to enable the institution to conduct more research and make other decisions quickly.
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Nawangwe who was speaking to the press shortly after launching a new strategic plan for the school said that the institution which will now be autonomous has been contributing forty percent of all the research the university conducts but often faces hurdles when handling grants where funders do not necessarily want to deal with the College of Health Sciences under which it has been operating.
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Each year, MakSPH gets up to 350 publications of their work in international peer-reviewed journals and at any one, they handle up to 200 research projects which include health surveys which are used by the government to make public health decisions.
Nawangwe says offering them autonomy will help them diversify and be able to quickly handle emerging public health concerns.
However, while the institution is making this move now, it should be noted the school was once independent having started as an institute of public health before becoming a school.
Prof Fred Wabwire- Mangen a Medical Researcher and Public Health Specialist says in the early 1950s, they started as a department of preventive medicine in Kasangati.
He says the autonomous status comes in handy noting that researchers have already recommended that 75% of public health training should be done outside of the classroom. This he says means that they engage in a lot of collaborations which need swiftness in decision making and going to areas that may not be necessarily of interest to a college.
Already, he says the school has since 1994 been running what is referred to as public health schools without walls which enables everybody to play a role in public health.
Prof Rhoda Wanyenze, the Dean at the school said as they become stand-alone, they have identified three critical areas that need urgent attention and developed a five-year strategic plan on how they will attend them.
She says they want to address emerging issues including climate change and urbanisation and the health issues that come with them.
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However, Wanyenze says while the school tends to get a lot of international grants, some of the issues affecting Uganda do not attract as much foreign funding and yet the available government-provided research money through the Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund is not enough.
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She called for more financial support tagged to local public health concerns.
