Ruth Nara’s work as a 2017 IDRC Research Award Recipient “reinforced my passion for improving the health of the most vulnerable populations, including displaced women and children,” she says. “I am more than encouraged to continue contributing to reducing the systemic inequalities that affect access to health.”

During field studies in Kampala and the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Nara sought to understand the reproductive health needs of Congolese refugees in Uganda, including maternal health and delivery care, contraception, and abortion and post-abortion care.

She found that maternal healthcare was inadequate: human resources were insufficient, facilities were poor, and medications were not always available. Women faced long waits to get care, sometimes resorting to offering bribes for services. Many faced discrimination when accessing services, and language barriers compounded these problems.

Nara believes that her research findings will ultimately contribute to policies and programs to improve reproductive health rights and services for conflict-affected populations in Uganda. The fieldwork, she says, “reminded me that I was in the right place and I should continue to be in this space.”

Equally important, it brought home “that the women I spoke with in this study are people, just like you and me. They’re not just numbers, they’re not just subjects, but they’re living, breathing people who have their human potential and deserve support and respect of their human rights.”

“By working within the Foundations for Innovation program and the Advisory Committee for Research Ethics, I had the unique opportunity to bridge the two areas,” says 2017 IDRC Research Award Recipient Matchteld van den Berg. Those two areas are also the focus of van den Berg’s graduate studies, exploring the ethics around vaccine access, informed consent, and individual autonomy.

In recent years there has been an accelerated push to develop a malaria vaccine, she says. But questions surface around justice and the vulnerability of the research participants and intended benefactors.

During fieldwork in Tanzania, she spoke with the caretakers of children who had been enrolled in a clinical vaccine trial to improve her understanding of their experiences. “Mothers may not have access to healthcare,” she says, “so consenting to a vaccine trial, regardless of the risks or conditions, may be the only feasible method to access medical care.” What’s more, the financial incentives to participate may be such that they override other considerations.

“Gaining insight into the realities participants inhabit is essential for conducting ethical research in a just and fair manner,” she concludes. “I think we sometimes forget the relatedness we have with one another and the importance of making those connections. Through this we can best learn from one another to design research studies that are respectful and effective, building trust and relationships along the way.”

For van den Berg, the research “refined my sense of the importance of global collaboration on key issues in development. This has impacted the direction I would like to take my research and, ultimately, the career path I follow,” she says.

Is it possible to tackle obesity and undernourishment simultaneously? That’s the question 2017 Research Award Recipient Carly Hayes set out to answer. Peru, she says, “suffers from a double burden of malnutrition: over 59% of the adult population are overweight or obese, while many children in rural areas are stunted or suffer from anemia.”

Peru has carried out a concerted program to reduce stunting in children under five, says Hayes, but efforts to address obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases such as diabetes have been piecemeal and lack overall policy coherence. A debate is underway as to whether the policies that solved one problem could be retrofitted to address another.

Hayes concluded that retooling existing nutrition policies is a viable option, but “these policies shouldn’t take the place of a more holistic nutrition strategy that seeks to create a healthier food environment.”

Hayes’ says the research and fieldwork in Lima, the Department of Cusco, and the town of Ollantaytambo in the high Andes “gave me the chance both to deepen my knowledge of non-communicable disease prevention and to strengthen my skills in logistics and planning, monitoring and evaluation, and communications.”

“I feel that I grew a lot as a researcher, as a professional, and on a personal level throughout my year as a research awardee.”

However, Hayes considers that one of the most valuable opportunities “was the chance to interact with a cohort of awardees who bring a wide variety of experience, knowledge, and skills to the program. Learning from this remarkable group has allowed me to expand my knowledge of 10 international development issues, instead of just one!”

“Health problems are about more than money,” says 2016 IDRC Research Award recipient Juan Carlos Rivillas. “If we want to achieve universal health coverage by 2030 — one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals — we need to take action on quality of care and inequalities in the use of health services. These are a cause of poor maternal health outcomes worldwide.”

This was Rivillas’ conclusion after his study of the relationship between maternal and infant mortality, health financing, and health system issues in his home country of Colombia. “Beyond financing, the quality of services is crucial in improving maternal and infant health,” he says.

Carrying out research and working at IDRC, “opened my mind about the importance of research for development and global strategies,” he says.

It also expanded his skills. “Most of my research experience had been using quantitative analysis,” he says. “At IDRC, I learned to develop and to implement qualitative research, and to combine both methods. I was interpreting my results when I suddenly realized I understood the problems and potential solutions more easily when I mixed methods.”

“I left Ottawa aspiring to identify the needs of mothers in Nepal and to find ways of delivering better healthcare,” says 2015 Research Award recipient Sunisha Neupane. “Two months after being there I realized how much I don’t know.”

Neupane’s eye-opening experience started with a 22-hour bus ride and 4.5-hour walk to Bohoragaun in western Nepal. It continued when she discovered her research subjects — new and expectant mothers — “were younger than me” and as curious about her as she was about them. “The more I opened up about who I am and what my lifestyle is like, the more they told me about theirs. I had heard and read about building trust and there I was experiencing it,” she says.

“I learned how important it is to live there and to become part of a community, to connect with people and build friendships to be able to conduct participatory research,” says Neupane.

“The IDRC Research Award has encouraged me to keep working for healthcare access, to be open, and to listen to people I’m advocating for,” she says. “Understanding people is crucial and should influence policies for people-centred healthcare.”

Read more about Sunisha’s experience in this blog entry. 

Graduate education should challenge traditional modes of learning and create new knowledge. In the field of ecohealth, however, that doesn’t always happen, says Mathieu Feagan, a 2014 IDRC Research Award recipient.

Feagan set out to examine how the knowledge of graduate students, young professionals, and early career academics in Canada and Latin America could be better applied to contribute to ecological sustainability and human health. This inquiry built on his PhD research about how current academic training and research often disregard the experiences and skills of experts-to-be and therefore maintain the status quo.

His IDRC project’s working groups, Feagan says, were made up of “incredibly thoughtful people committed to social-environmental justice.” But, he says, “our position as graduate students, interns, and short-term contract holders puts us, in some sense, in competition for a limited number of jobs, few of which are actually designed to support our aspirations for social-environmental justice. Learning about the different ways that we each come to terms with this and take up action in the North and the South, will continue to be a powerful experience for me,” he says.