Global Health and Infectious Diseases Working Group at KCCR
Skills for Excellence In Science Series (SEXISS)
The Skills for Excellence in Science Series (SEXISS) is the flagship training program of the Global Health and Infectious Diseases Research Group at Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR). SEXISS was created to provide high quality scientific capacity-building and career development opportunities to medical, bio-medical and advanced nursing practitioners, graduate students, and early-mid career scientists. The courses are designed to be immersive, combining rich interactive lectures with practical sessions delivered by carefully selected faculty, resulting in an improvement in scientific research competence for all committed participants. Scheduled training programs for the year are shown below. Details of each program and application details will be disseminated at least 8 weeks in advance.
SEXISS Programs for 2019 Proposed Date Duration
Research Methods April 2019 4 days
Basic Epidemiology with STATA June 2019 5 days
Clinical Research and Trials September 2019 4 days
Scientific Writing Workshop November 2019 4 days
1. Research Methods In four Days (REMIND)
The research methods course will focus on providing participants with skills to improve their ability to elucidate viable research questions and design studies appropriately to answer them, taking into consideration time and resource constraints. Via lectures and practical sessions, the course will introduce participants to the relevance of sample size and appropriate sampling approaches, primary and secondary data collection, as well as data management (entry and cleaning).
2. Basic Epidemiology with STATA (BASES)
This BASES short course is aimed at providing participants with skills in epidemiological thinking, epidemiological study designs, data management and analyses, as well as basic coding using the statistical software package- STATA. The course will be delivered by highly experience faculty, and combines lectures with a strong focus on practical exercises, including supervised data analyses of sample “real-world” datasets and the discussion of published studies. An additional day will be set aside for participants who desire hands-on coaching using their own data.
3. Clinical Research and Trials (CREST)
This course covers the basic concepts of clinical research with emphasis on clinical trials. The course focuses on why and how clinical research is carried out, pharmacovigilance, Good Clinical Practice – among others, in addition to the importance of ethics in clinical research. Using a combination of practical case studies, lectures and group exercises, the course is designed to equip participants with the practical and contextual knowledge needed for implementing clinical trials. It is intended to introduce participants to the design, conduct and management of clinical studies with special emphasis on research ethics.
4. Scientific Writing for Effective Research (SWEaR)
This is an intense, four-day workshop in Scientific writing which will cover the basic concepts of scientific writing, with special emphasis on proposal development for grant application and manuscript writing for publications. It is designed to equip participants with the fundamental principles and technical know-how to improve their scientific writing for research, academia or career in any biomedical field that requires scientific writing as an important skill for career advancement. The workshop will combine analyses of case studies and detailed discussions of in-class exercises with a series of interactive lectures.
Application and Attendance
The online application portal to participate any of the SEXISS courses is opened at least 6 weeks before the start of course. The call for applications is widely circulated via various platforms, mailing lists, social media and is also available through the KCCR website. The call for applications will provide detailed information on the course content, schedule, application process and fees. Only online applications are accepted, and selected applicants will be notified via email. Shortlisted participants would have to accept the offer online and pay the required course fee to be assured of a seat in the course. Participants in all SEXISS courses will be required to attend 95% of all sessions and complete all assignments before being eligible to receive a certificate of attendance.
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Points
All courses will be CPD-accredited by the Medical and Dental Council, Pharmacy Council, Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Allied Health Professions Council. For each course, CPD points may differ across the various awarding bodies.
Enquiries
For further enquiries or information, you may contact any of the SEXISS course coordinators at the KCCR Global Health and Infectious Diseases Research group via email: osei@kccr.de or afumadjeiawuah@kccr.de