2024: The year ahead
As we start 2024, I wanted to share with you an update on some of the exciting activities we have coming up this year.
This year is our first full year working under our new five-year strategy which aims to grow the skills, knowledge and networks for our members, deliver impact for those in low resource settings and for the global health and tropical medicine community, and also strengthen our capacity and resources for the future.
There are many exciting new plans around improving skills, knowledge and networks.
Our Early Career Grants programme
We are pleased to have just announced a new three-year funding partnership for the Early Career Grants Programme from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), with UK International Development from the UK government. This funding alone will support up to 225 early career grants in 2024, and means we will once again be able to increase our support for those carrying out their first piece of research in tropical medicine or global health.
This Programme has proved to be an incredible tool with 100% saying they have gained new skills, 55% saying they have grown networks and 14% being able to achieve additional grants, roles and other advances. Other partners including The International Alliance for the Control of Scabies (IACS) and The Journal of Comparative Pathology Educational Trust (JCPET) have also agreed to fund awardees in 2024, in the field of scabies and one health, with more partnerships and funding to be announced. With guidance sessions on the Programme, case studies and other support we hope this Programme helps grow knowledge and skills for applicants and awardees, and provides some of the new innovations in our sector.
Alongside this news for our established Early Career Grants Programme we also start the year with exciting ambitions for additional grants to support those who have delivered one of our Early Career Grants, to take their research to the next level. Additionally, we are scoping new grants which could support capacity building for both institutions and professionals working in global health and tropical medicine. Please keep an eye on our newsletter for future announcements about these areas of work.
We also welcome a new Grants Manager to the team, Sian Tatbak, who started earlier in January and will be overseeing the Early Career Grants Programme. As she started her role, we launched the RSTMH 2024 Early Career Grants Programme on the 22 January. In 2023 we were able to confirm a record number of grants for early career researchers, currently at around 220, but with more to be confirmed over the coming couple of weeks. This is a great time for Sian to join the team and help us make the Programme an even bigger success.
Our Journals
It is an interesting time for our journals this year also, as we further develop our editorial boards and to use the platforms to showcase the excellent research, learnings, thought pieces and case studies from our sector. While International Health continues to find its way as an open access journal, supplements as stand-alone pieces and also parts of wider dissemination partnerships prove very successful with high numbers of engagement. We start the year with two open calls for submissions for Special Issues on the topics of Artificial Intelligence and also snakebite, with plans with partners including WHO for more interesting content during 2024.
Our events
Our support for those starting their careers is also a focus on other areas of our work this year. We have a plan for the year for a combination of in-person and virtual events, from briefings to full days focused on specific areas of health, as well as cross-cutting challenges for the sector.
We want to deliver more virtual and in-person opportunities for our established Research in Progress meetings, which enable new researchers to showcase their work. We are also planning to start a series of short events to enable members and Fellows to learn more from one another about their interesting and unique areas of work.
Additionally, a new interview series will provide insights into the many careers of our members, Fellows and friends. The Membership Directory and guidance webinars plus blogs provide more opportunities for early careers to gain new knowledge and grow their networks.
In 2024 we also hope to deliver our first Regional Meeting which comprises a one-day scientific meeting, a one-day Research in Progress meeting, and to trial our first workshop for grant awardees along with networking opportunities for members and Fellows. We would like the first one of these meetings to be West Africa, as we have had to postpone plans to deliver events in the region since 20219 due to Covid-19. We have made the difficult decision to push the meeting back from February to ensure we can make it as strong as possible. Once we have tested out the format for this, we hope to be able to deliver this Regional Meeting every couple of years in a different region each time, to help us meet with and support as many of our members, Fellows, friends and partners as we can.
Our members and Fellows
For our members and fellows, we are dedicated to enhancing the membership experience. To achieve this, we are actively scoping and developing some exciting new opportunities that we believe will further enrich the value of being a part of our close-knit network. Additionally, we are in the process of establishing to new ways to acknowledge the accomplishments of our members and to foster collaboration with like-minded societies and institutions to create new shared networks for our members.
In terms of delivering impact for communities, we have a few plans that we will start to roll out this year, alongside the benefits we offer through sign up to our newsletter, our grants, journals and events.
This year we are looking to take forward our hopes for a comprehensive and multi-layered mentorship and collaboration platform. This is in its scoping stage as we await funding for its development. This platform is in response to feedback from many of our members and partners that there is a need in the community to have a platform to enable individuals, research groups and organisations to find collaborations and support, whether it be one off, or longer term, for advice, career development, funding collaborations or more.
This could be matching the needs and availability of two individuals, or could be matching individual to group, group to group, or individual or group to organization. To some extent this builds on our ambitions with developing the website grow, which brings together jobs, courses, funds, research and voluntary opportunities across global health. For this to be a fully automated platform which also enables communication to be started, it needs quite a lengthy development time, but we hope to announce whether this is possible within the next few months.
Implementation and policy
Although much of our work is focused on funding and showcasing research we are also keen to ensure that the work of implementation and policy are also supported by RSTMH, through our members and partners and directly through our grants and events. We’ll be exploring ways to better deliver successes in these areas during 2024.
In 2023 we signed a number of MOUs with institutions across India and this year we hope to maximise these and look to other countries to establish similar relationships. These partnerships will help us to grow our network and be part of more collaborations to achieve impact for the community.
I am also delighted to tell you that we have just moved into a new office, in London, after more than decade in our old space. The new office is roughly the same size as our previous one, and only a mile away from it. This move provides us with a significant cost saving and also with the opportunity to create a new environment for the team and our visitors.
This year provides a good opportunity to continue our 5-year journey to become financially sustainable, and with the resources in the team and across our voluntary network to be able to meet our ambition. Through partnerships with foundations and governments we are growing our support for those early in their careers.
We are extremely grateful for donations we have been receiving from our members and Fellows which help us to increase our scale and start new activities that we know would be valued. Over this year we look to increase partnerships for funding so that we are able to do as much as can towards our impact for communities. If you or your organization believes you can support us in this way,Tamar [dot] Ghosh [at] RSTMH [dot] org ( please do get in touch).
Being based in the UK we are aware that it is the network of volunteers across the world that enable us to deliver our work and we will focus this year on trying to ensure our networks reflect the areas of the world, the areas of work, and the approaches needed to solve the significant challenges in global health.