SCOHERE PROJECT

The Sustainable Capacity Building in One Health and Emergency Research Ethics (SCOHERE) project aims to develop short-term educational materials on the ethics of One Health research and Emergency research for One Health researchers, research ethics committee members (REC) and ethics regulatory body (ERB) members in Kenya and to develop publicly accessible web-based case studies and modules for sustainable capacity building in the ethics of One Health and Emergency research. The work of this project will also provide practicum experiences for three graduate-level trainees who are self-funding themselves in the parent R25 program. This parent program is the Masters in One Health and Emergency Research Ethics (MOHERE). The parent project is a collaboration between The Ohio State University (OSU), the University of Nairobi (UoN) and the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), and aims to strengthen the research ethics training capacity in Kenya with a focus on One Health and emergency research. One Health is an approach which addresses international health with an emphasis on the interactions between humans, animals, plants and the environment. Such research raises distinct ethical issues which are further complicated during emergencies and crises, like disasters, pandemics and humanitarian crises. One Health research is especially important in East Africa and widely conducted in Kenya. This creates an important need for timely capacity building among researchers, RECs and ERBs to address the ethical issues with One Health research and Emergency research. The SCOHERE project will supplement the MOHERE program by providing opportunities for some of the MOHERE co-investigators to work together in bioethics capacity-building. The project has also provided funding for three MOHERE trainees who are currently self-funding themselves in MOHERE to receive some funding as they conduct their research practicums towards their program requirements in MOHERE. The supplement research will be conducted by Kenyan researchers and the co-investigators will have the opportunity to mentor these researchers, building further capacity for bioethics research in Kenya. The MOHERE trainees will also learn bioethics research skills through their contributions to the project. The outputs from the research will include educational curricula and training materials for One Health research and Emergency research that can be delivered in short-course formats that will be more suitable to those working in One Health research, RECs and ERBs compared to the 1- and 2-year MOHERE programs. Another output will be open-access ethics materials available online to build capacity in One Health and Emergency research ethics.