The East and Southern Africa Migration and Health Fellowships are designed to promote and encourage multidisciplinary research on migration and health topics of pressing national and regional concern. The programme seeks to foster the development of a new generation of researchers who are interested in policy-relevant health issues affecting migrants and migration affected populations, and who are willing to undertake research based on priority areas of strategic importance to IOM research agenda in East and Southern Africa. It further strives to promote a new level of cooperation between IOM and academic institutions in the region.
As part of its contribution in improving monitoring of migrants health to inform policy and practices, IOM is seeking to host Masters/ Doctorate Fellows in the Migration and Health Units in East and Southern African countries.
The objectives of the fellowships are:
a. To foster high quality migration-related research in public health, social sciences and related disciplines in East and Southern Africa region;
b. To build networks of researchers interested in migration and health and generate research data on research migration and health in the two regions
c. To contribute to improved understanding of migration and health in East and southern Africa;
d. To promote migration and health as a research agenda and enhance the collection of disaggregated data with regards to health of migrants; and
e. To provide research-based evidence that support the integration of migration and health into policies and programmes in East and southern Africa.
2.2 Areas of Focus
The successful research fellows will be expected to focus their research in any of the following PHAMESA thematic areas or be willing to incorporate any of the themes into their research study:
a. Migrant Sensitive Health Services: This component focuses on building the capacity of partners to conduct on-the-ground implementation of interventions in a practical, holistic rights based manner. Using the IOM SDCB framework, partners, migrants and other identified stakeholders are capacitated to facilitate access to health facilities, social and health services on a non-discriminatory basis, with attention to migrants and migration affected communities as vulnerable and marginalized groups. Thematic areas under the SDCB framework include access to health services for migrants and migration affected communities, social behaviour change communication, vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and TB amongst migrants and migration affected communities.
b. TB in the mining sector include but not limited to:
- Socio-economic impact of migration in extractive industries;
- Incidence of TB in informal, small to medium mining sectors; the strategies that can be employed to prevent incidence of TB in those sectors and- Current policies in the mining sector in relation to TB and mobility.
- Good practices that promote the harmonisation of treatment regimens including the examination of the impact of international migration on treatment adherence and how best to promote treatment adherence.
c. Monitoring Migrants Health: Through monitoring and research on health vulnerabilities in relation to migration PHAMESA II works to increase empirical findings on migration to inform policy and programming. Thematic areas under monitoring migrants’ health include:
- Migration, HIV, Sexual and Reproductive Health;
- Vulnerability to HIV and TB among commercial farm workers in provinces where IOM is currently implementing Migration and Health
- Malaria and human population mobility.
See details in the PDF document herewith attached