Guest edited by Kyaw Zin Thant, John Reeder and Xiao-Nong Zhou
An article collection in Infectious Diseases of Poverty.
The global technical strategies for both malaria and tuberculosis control emphasize the importance of research. Operational research is of particular importance in improving the performance of national disease control programs. The Structured Operational Research and Training Initiative (SORT IT) is a global partnership-based initiative led by the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) based at the World Health Organization. SORT IT supports countries to conduct operational research (OR) around their own priorities, build operational research capacity in their public health programs and make evidence-informed improvements in public health services. SORT IT leads trainees through the entire OR cycle from formulation of a research question, through protocol development and data analysis to the writing of a scientific paper for publication. SORT IT has been highlighted a good practice in research capacity-building by the ESSENCE initiative of funding agencies.
Starting in 2015, TDR supported a national SORT IT program in Myanmar led by the Ministry of Health’s Department for Medical Research. Training workshops were facilitated by teams of national researchers with the support of experienced SORT IT facilitators from organizations including the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (National Institute of Parasitic Diseases), the Institute of Tropical Medicine (Belgium), the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases and Médecins Sans Frontieres. This thematic collection from Infectious Disease of Poverty features the research outputs of the Myanmar national SORT IT Program 2015-16.
This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests.