Sharing Research Data to Improve Public Health in Africa: A Workshop Summary

By: Engineering and Medicine and National Academies of Sciences

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Synopsis: Sharing research data on public health issues can promote expanded scientific inquiry and has the potential to advance improvements in public health. Although sharing data is the norm in some research fields, such as the social sciences, sharing of data in public health is not as firmly established. On March 29–31, 2015, representatives of the Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institute on Aging, Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases of the World Health Organization, INDEPTH network, South Africa Medical Research Council, and Academy of Sciences of South Africa organized a workshop in Stellenbosch, South Africa, to explore issues related to sharing research data to improve public health in an African context. Hosted by the South African Medical Research Council and the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, the workshop brought together public health researchers and epidemiologists primarily from the African continent, along with selected international experts, to talk about the benefits and challenges of sharing data to improve public health, and to discuss potential actions to guide future work related to public health research data sharing.