Dr. Gloria Omosa-Manyonyi pioneers a program on Capacity Building for Scientific Manuscript Writing at FHS-UON

“UANDISHI-Building Capacity for Writing Scientific Manuscripts” is an innovative and experiential training program in mentoring and scientific manuscript writing, aimed at fostering scientific manuscripts writing skills and output, at the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS), University of Nairobi (UON). This program complements other existing research training ventures within FHS and is hosted at KAVI-Institute of Clinical Research (KAVI-ICR). IAVI funds UANDISHI through a collaborative grant secured by Dr. Gloria Omosa-Manyonyi (Principal Investigator) of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, UoN .

UANDISHI is modeled on the International Traineeships in AIDS Prevention Studies program (ITAPS) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Gloria Omosa-Manyonyi, was one of five experienced researchers who were trained in the inaugural 2015 ITAPS program.  Since then, she and other ITAPS mentor alumni from East Africa have successfully spearheaded regional scientific writing and data analysis workshops involving participants from research organizations in Africa.

By means of workshops and individualized mentoring, UANDISHI program delivers experiential training in Mentorship and Scientific Manuscript Writing. Mentors-in-training are supported in a structured fashion, to provide mentoring of mentees while developing manuscripts and ultimately submitting to peer reviewed journals. Participants are postgraduate students (mentees) and faculty/researchers (mentors).

We implemented the program at FHS/UON in 2021; inaugural mentoring and training were conducted from June to December 2021, and included three workshops plus a period of mentoring. The trainees consisted of  9 Mentors-in-training plus 9 Mentees drawn from Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery, Paediatrics and Child Health, Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Biochemistry, KAVI-ICR, Anaesthesia and Critical Care, UNITID, Diagnostic Imaging and Radiation Medicine, Human Pathology, and Ophthalmology.