Thread by @mentorshipzim

Second Thread: Experience and Knowledge as a Demographer

Well, details of what demography is and what A level subjects you need to study it, will be part of Thread #3. Now lets focus on my experience and the knowledge I "claim" to have

My experience started from the 2nd week after starting reading for masters in Demography at UZ. During our time, there were loads of opportunities; purely because we were pioneers and essentially because UNFPA and govt were determined to create a new profession

We were a class of 5, 4 males and 1 female, Clara Dube, who has been with UNICEF for past 20 years in various posts, and currently Chief of Field Office in Ethiopia👇🏾👇🏾

linkedin.com/in/clara-dube-…

Aomg the 4 males, one Kay Wotelawas Zambian, and currently lectures at Wits

wits.ac.za/staff/academic…

We got allocated beautiful postgraduate offices in the Commerce Building ,a state of the art building at UZ at the time. I remember telling everyone that I had a personal (not shared) computer. It ran on total memory of 250MB (YES MB!) but at that time considered super speed 😂😂

We were told our first project (to earn extra money) was to help the National Statistics Office, forerunner to current @zimstat with detailed thematic population reports out of the previous National Census. I worked on fertility and mortality

That consequently led me to focus on fertility and mortality in my masters thesis, getting me my very first full-time job (will come back to it later) before completing the masters degree!

You won't believe it but from the earnings of the first project, I bought my very first car; a mazda 323!

Throughout the degree programme we were constantly doing consultancy jobs. In fact we had most of our lectures in hotels around Zim than in the UZ lecture halls. Our lecturers were the PIs on the projects, and us the Research Assistants

As Research Assistants, we would write up proposals, do the sample size calculation, drawing up the sample often from the national statistics office sample frame, collect the data, analysing and report writing. Our learning was very applied and flavoured with income earnings!

We attended and presented in many workshops and conferences organised by UNFPA, UNDP and govt on planning about population generally, health facilities, schools including when to open a new state university in each of the provinces.

We travelled the length and breadth of Zimbabwe' I am proud to say I have been to each District in Zimbabwe, seen and associated with a variety of communities

One consultancy study we did for UNDP permanently shaped my career and experience. It was on HIV/AIDS and mobility, focusing on truck drivers and commercial sex workers. We spent weeks visiting border posts to collect data!

At the end of that study; the Centre for Population Studies, which housed the masters in Demography, was approached by the Biomedical Research and Training Institute (BRTI), who wanted a Research Manager a new longitudinal HIV prevention programme👇🏾

brti.co.zw

I got the job, had to complete my masters while working full-time, established and led a robust team, that grew from strength to strength to establish what today is known as Manicaland Centre for Public Health👇🏾👇🏾

manicalandhivproject.org

You certainly can't talk about HIV research in Zim without mention of the contribution that the Manicaland HIV Prevention project did. Through Prof Simon Gregson, founding Director, our work influenced the HIV models produced by UNAIDS HIV Modelling Reference Group!

I got the first opportunity to fly and present in an international conference while a Research Manager of the Manicaland HIV Prevention Project. I am proud to say I have been to several countries and countless international conferences on all continents of the world!

During my stint at BRTI- Manicaland HIV Prevention Project, then based in Hauna, Mutsa District, my team became favourite of the then Manicaland Governor, Manyonda, who would use us in all his public engagement to talk about HIV prevention

Governor Manyonda gave us a platform to break barriers, myths and stigma about HIV. His favourite was when our nurses would demonstrate condom use using a model penis; he would made sure the chiefs and headmen pay attention😂😂😂😂

Besides learning about implementing intervention research studies, medical demography, complex regression analysis and epidemiological work, I learnt a lot about community engagement, and the power of community participation in population-based surveillance

I lasted 3 yrs at BRTI, got head-hunted & contributed to establishment another research organisation that immensely contributed 2 HIV research in Zim; UZ-UCSF Collaborative Research Programme, now University of Zimbabwe Clinical Trials Research Centre👇🏾

uzchs-ctrc.org

MY WORK AT UZ-UCSF:

UZ-UCSF was formed out of Zimbabwe AIDS Prevention Project👇🏾
zapp.co.zw

Our work was purely clinical trials, and I was in charge of coordinating Microbicides Clinical Trials, conducting some of the earliest clinical trials for HIV prevention in Zim👇🏾👇🏾

I learnt a lot about the Clinical Trails process, data quality assurance and data quality control, wrote and presented a number of papers at International Conferences.

For the first time I worked with a semi-electronic data collection system, and a completely electronic QA/QC system, and that marked my future zeal and innovations in electronic data collection systems. I also become interested in bioethics as part of my daily work

After 5 years I got head hunted again; this time to South Africa, rural Northern KwaZulu-Natal, done through my former boss at BRTI Manicaland HIV Prevention who knew and was requested by someone at Africa Centre for Health to identify and recommend an experienced Demographer

I jumped at the opportunity just at the time Zim economy was starting to get a hit from sanctions, taking up leadership of the Africa Centre (now Africa Health Research Institute's) Health and Demographic Surveillance System where I lasted for 16 years

If you want details of what a health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) is read this publication👇🏾👇🏾

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11….

Crudely put, a HDSS is a population-based "laboratory" where you can longitudinally study the impact of anything at population-level, through observational studies, interventions, and clinical trials

At Africa Health Research Institute, I would get involved in designing innovative data collection systems to make the HDSS cheaper. We collected data from about 30,000 households (165 000 individuals) 3 times annually at an annual cost of over R20 million per year

My brief was to produce a data collection system that would cut data collection costs by one-third. I introduced what I termed real-time electronic data collection system, became completely paperless, eliminating paper and archiving costs, retrospectively digitalised all paper

Next I introduced electronic data quality assurance systems, further eliminating costs

Lastly I introduced telephonic data collection. For the 3 data collection rounds in a year, we would only have one field-based face-to-face data collection and 2 Call Centre based telephonic data collection

As a result of these innovations I achieved more than I had originally been requested to! I reduced data collection costs by 50%. I felt my work at Africa Health Research Institute was done!

Just as I was contemplating to seek new challenges, boom, South Africa announced the South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap (SARIR), developed to facilitate a research infrastructure investment programme, see document here👇🏾👇🏾

dst.gov.za/images/Attachm…

Together with my then boss (who is my current Director) and a colleague from Wits (who was running another HDSS in Mphumalanga), we proposed and got funded to establish the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network (SAPRIN)👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

saprin.mrc.ac.za

I am the current Research Operations Manager for SAPRIN, and I imported and finessed the same data collection systems I developed at Africa Health Research Institute into SAPRIN, see the blog below👇🏾👇🏾

saprinblog.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-sa…

The utility of our Call Centre-based telephonic data collection system was demonstrated under the Covid-19 pandemic, where our HDSS Nodes never stopped data collection due to lockdown measures

We spent much of 2020 providing technical advice to several research institutions across Africa and India on setting up telephonic data collection systems🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

END THREAD