Center for Evidence Health Policy - C4EHP
About the Center for Evidence into Health Policy
The Center for Evidence into Health Policy (C4EHP) is a research center which builds on the public health expertise of the most important universities in Tunisia with the aim to strenghten the public health profession and inform public health policies in Tunisia. The C4EHP reunites three Tunisian universities – University of Sfax, University of Tunis El Manar and University of Sousse which are making joint efforts to reinforce the relations between the higher education institutions and the wider economic and social environment in order to articulate better public health policies backed by science and evidence. A fourth institution, the University of Monastir is preparing to join the consortium.
The C4EHP has been established as an interdisciplinary research center throughout the CONFIDE capacity building project funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus + program.
The main activities undertaken by the center are research, training, capacity building and policy making.
C4EHP Mission, Vision and Objectives document - click here
Team
Sfax University
Founded in 1986 as a step towards decentralizing higher education in Tunisia, the University of Sfax has the following mission and priorities: to address the needs of the economic and social environment by offering quality higher education in domains that are relevant for the development of the country and of the wider region of Sfax governorate; develops and trains human resources: teachers, researchers and technical staff; develops R&D (valorization, innovation, technology transfer); improves the governance of its institutions; develops, strengthens and extends an internationalization culture and climate for the H.E systems.
News and World Best Report in Arab Region Universities Rankings, classifies the University of Sfax as the best university in Tunisia and the third best university in the Arab region in Biological Science Subject and fourth in Computer Science. In 2011, the Moroccan Magazine L’Economiste ranked the University of Sfax as the best University in the Maghreb Region in terms of academic publications and research quality.
The University of Sfax has 20 institutions, 37.336 students, 2095 teaching staff, 43 research units, 5 doctorate programs, and 103 Memorandum of Understandings with national and international partners.
University of Tunis El Manar (Tunisia)
Faculty of Medicine Tunis (FTM) is part of El Manar University, the largest university in Tunis with 15 schools and institutes, more than 37 000 students and 1500 faculty staff members. It is considered as the top school in medicine in North Africa. FMT encompasses 10 research laboratories and 7 research units that encompass major research topics in medicine and public health. In particular, 3 axes of research have been defined in 2015 with an emphasis on impact on public health: Neurosciences and Mental Health; Endemic diseases; Oncology and cancer diseases.
FMT is also part of an ecosystem of 10 university hospitals in Tunis and Tunis suburbs, each hospital including several units of applied research in medicine and public health encompassing infectious and emerging diseases and public health policies.
University of Sousse (Tunisia)
The University of Sousse offers a wide range of academic and professional programs in different fields, such as: medical, paramedical, economic, technical, management, etc. Currently, University of Sousse has more than 20,000 students and more than 2,000 teachers across 17 institutions of higher education with: 4 faculties, 3 schools, 10 institutes, 1 National degree of doctor of medicine, 42 masters of research (LMD), 49 professional Masters (LMD), 10 doctoral programs, 64 research units.
In the medical field, the University of Sousse has a Faculty of Medicine (2400 students), a high school of science and technical health (500 students) and a higher Institute of nursing (350 students).
For post graduate education, among others, the University of Sousse offers the following programs: Master in medicine and health, Masters of research (Health Sciences, Palliative care) and Professionals Masters (Congenital and Pediatric Cardiology, Professional and Environmental Dermatology, Hospital Hygiene, Quality of Care and Management of Care Services, Clinic Sexology, Non Invasive Ventilation in Hospital and at home).
The University of Sousse is engaged in more than 76 cooperative agreements for research and exchange with foreign universities and centers of research in Africa, Europa, Asia and North America to support the training and research projects.
Mission
The mission of the center is to promote and engender evidence-based public health policies, interlink the main academic, medical, institutional, economic and social stakeholders in the country in order to create a viable ecosystem that would work together in order to tackle the main public health issues, and internationalize the public health research and teaching in Tunisia.
Our Work
In order to pursue its mission, the C4EHP has created a specialized network formed by medical doctors and public health experts who work together with scholars and experts from several European universities, such as Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania), University of Trnava (Slovakia), Southern Denmark University (Denmark) in order to build research capacity in the main university centers in the country, organize training programs for scholars, public health practitioners, academics and professionals from the non-governmental sector and enhance the public health research in Tunisia.
Currently the team of the center is working together with the European partners to implement the CONFIDE project. There has been a first round of train the trainees training into Public Health Policy which has been organized in each Tunisian partner universities. The training has been held in English and French and has covered three modules: Public Health Research, Health Promotion Policies and Evidence-Based Public Health Policy. The train the trainees training session has been followed by a second round which has been delivered in all three partner universities, which targeted mainly students, public health practitioners, young academics, nurses, and professionals from the non-governmental sector.
The center also encourages the public health research. The scholars and PhD students enrolled in the training program have written and developed a series of research project which have been accepted as abstracts and presentations to the EUPHA 2019 Conference which will take place in November in Marseille, France.
The C4EHP will continue to sustain research in public health and act as a hub and as a resource for the networks of scholars working in public health or interested in connected topics and domains from Tunisia, wider North African region, Europe and other areas of the world.
Amongst forthcoming new activities the team foresees new training project on bacterial resistance. The involvement of current students could lead to establishing a distance learning program Students to Students.
Funding
The centre is looking for more opportunities for funding from EU (ERASMUS Plus K107 with Babeș-Bolyai University and the University of Southern Denmark), EUROPE AID, The World Bank, US AID. Development projects could be oriented on trainings for PH professionals focusing on maternal mortality, drug abuse, smoking reduction, obesity, etc. Creating partnerships with business enterprises in Tunis is also explored (telephone companies, pharma, etc).