Changing the Gear of Research Processes: The Case of gPM + Testing

Over the past two years, World Vision has implemented the Strengthen Productive Safety Net Program Institutions and Resilience (SPIR II) with a consortium of partners and USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) funding. Evidence-building through research is a critical component, both to establish evidence of impact and to guide implementation. To increase the local implementing teams' ownership of the learning processes, the SPIR II team instituted a Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) approach to closely engage the implementing partners in the mental health study set-up and implementation.  SPIR II’s learning partner, IFPRI, also identified a local principal investigator (PI), Negussie Deyessa (MD, Ph.D.), with extensive experience in this domain in Ethiopia to support all aspects of the study design, data collection, and analysis. Dr. Negussie is a trained psychologist and professor of epidemiology at Addis Ababa University's Department of Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health. In the previous learning agenda under SPIR, two local universities were a part of the learning agenda, but the psychologists that supported the mental health research were based at US-based institutions. By enhancing the research team with a psychologist at an Ethiopian institution and engaging the implementing teams more strategically in the process, SPIR II expects learning from this study to be more easily incorporated into program implementation and shared through local policy forums in Ethiopia.