The Building Stronger Public Health Institutions and Systems (BIS) Program in Uganda

Aims of the BIS collaboration

NIPH and its partner institutions are focusing on projects within two specific and important public health functions.  Firstly, in public health informatics: the project will explore, identify, and test synergies in birth and death registrations through the strengthening of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) and integration with health registries in Uganda. Secondly, in health systems resilience: this project will interrogate the applicability, robustness and utility of existing frameworks used to access epidemic preparedness and will assess the extent to which lessons from past epidemics have informed health systems strengthening, as well as identify good practices and describe barriers to health systems learning in Africa.

Through this project, Norad will fund two PhD scholarships with relevance to the two public health domains. Closer institutional collaboration between NIPH and its partner institutions has been facilitated through a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and Collaboration Agreement.

BIS Uganda Project updates

2025 and beyond

• The two BIS-funded PhD students and our third BIS-linked PhD student continue to make progress on their projects, with close supervision by both Makerere School of Public Health and NIPH scientific staff
• A revised Collaboration Agreement allowing for extra funding was signed by all 3 parties in January 2025, and with this extra funding, the Uganda team has already engaged the services of research assistants to support fieldwork
• The BIS Norway team will visit Makerere School of Public Health and UNIPH in 2025, to be coordinated with workshops that the PhD students are planning
  

March 2024

• The NIPH BIS Program Director, Linda Martinsen, visited our partners in Uganda for the first time, alongside Project Coordinator Aurelia India Neumark, on her fourth visit to Kampala
• This provided an opportunity to discuss next steps with the BIS Uganda program, hear more about the progression of UNIPH and consolidate opportunities and linkages
• We also visited Makerere School of Public Health, and discussed progress with our two BIS-funded PhD students (studying health systems resilience and digital health, and our third BIS-linked PhD student, as well as their supervisors»
• Also in March, Ragnhild Dybdahl, on secondment to Africa CDC, took part in a workshop as part of a new African Mental Health Leadership Programme. Ragnhild and Joy Muhia, Mental Health Innovation Network Coordinator, have reflected on the workshop here.

May 2023

Formalization of the partnership:

• In May, the parties signed a tri-partite Collaboration Agreement setting out our goals for the next 3 years, and progressed work on the two projects

February 2023

Launch of the projects:

• By February, the three partners had signed an MoU, agreed the terms of a Collaboration Agreement, advertised and recruited two PhD students and started planning for the two projects.
• The project team had engaged in continued communication with stakeholders relevant to the two public health domains.

October 2022

Scoping of the projects:

• A second visit in October 2022 fully fleshed out the two projects – digital health and health systems resilience – and solidified our mutual working relationship.  

April 2022

Inaugural visit: 

• Spring 2022 was the NIPH team’s first visit to Kampala to explore opportunities and themes for the BIS Uganda project. We met representatives from, among others, UNIPH, UNICEF, WHO, the Ministry of Health, HISP Uganda – and, of course, NIPH and Makerere University of Public Health

History of Collaboration

The NIPH has a long history of research collaboration with Makerere University, with four major research projects at present. 

These important Uganda-Norway collaborations have not focused on institutional cooperation between our respective public health institutions. The Uganda BIS project is therefore exploring the opportunities to develop longer-term institutional collaborations between the newly formed Uganda National Institute of Public Health, Makerere University School of Public Health, and the NIPH.

NIPH Collaborative Team

• Mahima Venkateswaran, NIPH co-Country Coordinator
• Frederik Frøen, NIPH co-Country Coordinator
• Aurelia India Neumark, BIS Project Management Support

Partners in Uganda