Responding effectively to outbreaks of infectious diseases saves lives. Sharing knowledge, learning, and experience of outbreak response across geographies, diseases, and between researchers and policy makers is essential. Without collaboration, outbreaks risk spreading in size and scale.
Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine came together in 2016 to form the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST), with an academic consortium including the University of Oxford. The UK-PHRST’s integrated tripartite remit includes outbreak response, research, and capacity building.
Funded by UK aid from the Department of Health and Social Care, UK-PHRST supports low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in investigating and responding to disease outbreaks and conducts research to improve our response to future epidemics.
The UK-PHRST are pleased to announce the launch of their new Knowledge Hub, where practitioners and researchers can find and share the most useful information for their work in outbreak response.
Hosted on The Global Health Network, the Knowledge Hub aims to:
- Bridge the gap between the fast-paced world of online discussion forums and maintain long-term access to useful resources.
- Share up-to-date research and policy, as well as a dedicated education and training area with resources to support learning and inform effective outbreak response.
- Connect UK-based researchers with specialists in LMICs, creating a flow of information exchange and localised adaptations to outbreaks.
Many of these resources have been developed by UK-PHRST and its partners, including a number of virtual learning resources on COVID-19.
The new UK-PHRST Knowledge Hub provides a community function, allowing members to start group conversations around key topics, such as this timely post on contact tracing technology and comment on current issues, as shown in this blog on the importance of looking after Mental Health in COVID-19.
We look forward to you joining, contributing and using our Knowledge Hub as a reliable and up-to-date source on outbreak response! Please do give us feedback on how you would like to see the UK-PHRST Knowledge Hub evolve in our discussion forum here.
About The Global Health Network
Faster and better research is critical to solving the world’s biggest health challenges. The Global Health Network enables researchers and institutions to share best practice and know-how with each other to drive progress, while empowering local health professionals undertaking research in the world’s most vulnerable settings. The Global Health Network facilitates sustainable health improvements through sharing of research methods, knowledge and experience through an open-access online platform and face-to-face within varied healthcare settings. It delivers training, skills and career development to frontline health workers, no matter where they are or how resource-constrained their environment may be. The result is easier, faster, better research to help address the world's biggest health challenges.
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