AMARI SC meets in Cape Town

The African Mental Health Research Initiative (AMARI)’s Steering Committee (SC) met in Cape Town on the 5th and 6th of November 2019 for its second and last 2019 biannual meeting. The two day meeting was hosted by the AMARI University of Cape Town (UCT) and held at the Alan J. Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health.   

The SC is AMARI’s governing board responsible for the programme’s governance and is composed of global mental health and research leaders from Ethiopia, Malawi, South Africa, UK and Zimbabwe.

The meeting is part of AMARI’s key monitoring tools used to monitor the programme’s progress. Key discussions at the Cape Town meeting were centered on capacity building of the fellows, fellows’ career pathways, future of the AMARI, expanding the AMARI Network, mental health service user involvement, fellows’ trainings and the 2020 AMARI Annual Scientific Meeting.

AMARI Director Prof Dixon Chibanda noted the meeting as central in reflecting, strengthening and planning for the programme’s future. He said, “As we draw to the end of AMARI I, this meeting helped us reflect on our set goals and objectives as of when the programme commenced, lessons learnt along implementation and how we can best improve the programme thinking ahead of DELTAS II.”

AMARI is a mental health research capacity building grant funded through the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science (DELTAS) in Africa, a programme of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) implemented with the support of Wellcome and the UK Department of International Development.