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Liberia
University of Liberia College of Health Sciences/A.M. Dogliotti Medical School
PI: Bernice Dahn
Project Duration: June 1, 2020 - October 31, 2023
Focus Areas: Clinical Resarch Training, Curriculum Development, Faculty Development Program, Infrastructure Improvements
Final Summary of Project Activities
The main focus of activities conducted by the University of Liberia College of Health Sciences was human capacity building. One major effort was the Teaching Apprentice Program, which was developed to identify and recruit future preclinical faculty for the ULCHS Medical School to replace foreign faculty. To achieve this, PEER funding supported 14 Liberian Teaching Apprentices (3 females and 11 males) to enroll in graduate degree programs in the biomedical sciences at the University of Ghana. Six members of the first cohort successfully completed their studies and returned home to join the ULCHS faculty, while the remaining eight will return home at the end of December 2023.
Meanwhile, 61 faculty members (21 females and 40 males) in three cohorts at the ULCHS and the main University of Liberia participated in the Faculty Development Training implemented in collaboration with the Vanderbilt University. The primary goals included promoting excellent classroom teaching and change management skills, encouraging research utilization, and advancing the capacity building of medical education through effective leadership in education, assessment, and evaluation. The ULCHS faculty involved in these trainings are all from preclinical and clinical disciplines with backgrounds in internal medicine, pediatric, surgery, psychiatry, and clinical pathology, and faculty from the departments of Chemistry, Physics, Biology from the main University of Liberia also took part. The program also included a mentorship component that trained two cohorts of faculty and medical resident as teachers and leaders through a blended program of web-based self-learning modules and interactive hands-on learning.
Another major outcome of the PEER Liberia program at ULCHS was a newly revised curriculum developed in cooperation with U.S. partners. The university’s infrastructure was also significantly enhanced with PEER support. PEER funded the purchase of two medium-sized buses to transport faculty and students between the JFK Hospital and the medical school campuses. The program also supported procurement of much-needed laboratory equipment and reagents for the ULCHS Medical School laboratories and refurbishment and purchase of equipment and reagents for laboratories of the departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Biological Science at the University of Liberia Science College.
Besides the academic and research capacity building aspects, this project also resulted in significant improvement in the university’s ability to manage external funding support, including the establishment of a ULCHS Grant Management Office. A financial assessment conducted in 2019 had identified major gaps that needed to be addressed in order to allow the university to receive a subaward directly from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. A third-party organization therefore managed the funds on behalf of ULCHS until the improvements were made in to accounting software, standard operating procedures, financial controls, audit protocols, and dedicated financial management staff. With these issues successfully addressed, the university was able to manage the funds on its own for the last year of the project. This represented an important step forward, putting the university in a position to gain the trust of other international donors and receive and independently manage funds to continue and expand the activities launched under PEER. By the time the project ended in October 2023, ULCHS reported receiving an additional $11.6 million in grants from 10 other U.S. and international donors to support ongoing work.
Back to PEER Liberia Grant Recipients
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