HHR hosted a two-day high-level consultative meeting with senior researchers from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) to explore opportunities for strengthened research collaboration and capacity building.
The consultative session brought together leadership and research teams from Haramaya University, CSIC and HHR to discuss shared priorities, ongoing initiatives, and future areas of collaboration aimed at improving maternal and child health outcomes.
During the opening session, Dr. Yieshak Yeusuf, Vice President for Research and Community Engagement at Haramaya University, highlighted the university’s longstanding commitment to collaborative research. He emphasized that Haramaya University has a strong history of partnerships with national and international research institutions, noting that such collaborations are central to advancing scientific innovation and community impact.
Building on this, Prof. Nega, HHR Lead, explained that HHR has been actively working with various research institutions across disciplines. He stated that the consultative meeting with CSIC represents an important milestone and is expected to pave the way for future joint research projects and capacity-building initiatives.
As part of the discussions, the CSIC delegation presented an overview of their institutional mandate, ongoing activities, and key research focus areas. This was followed by interactive discussions that allowed both sides to discuss common interests and potential avenues for collaboration.
On the second day of the meeting, HHR team presented a comprehensive overview of HHR’s activities, highlighting its impact, community engagement efforts, socio-behavioral research programs, and the recently launched clinical trial, ECHiLiBRiST, and shared preliminary findings from several ongoing and completed research initiatives, including CHAMPS, Pregnancy Surveillance, Invasive Bacterial Disease Surveillance, and Neural Tube Defects studies.
Following the presentations, participants engaged in in-depth discussions on potential collaborative areas, including capacity building, advancing laboratory capacities, strengthening research governance and management systems, and experiences in designing strategies to better translate research evidence into policy actions that can improve maternal and child health.
