Building research capacity in Pakistan: Effectiveness of an epidemiology training workshop taught by traditional classroom and video teleconferencing methods

Building research capacity in health services has been recognized internationally as an important pillar for the production of a sound evidence base for decision-making in policy and practice. The developing countries are currently facing an increasing epidemic of noncommunicable diseases in addition to non-resolving problems of infections, malnutrition and health problems of reproductive health. Clinical research is the link between advances in research and innovations in medical practice. Physician-scientists, trained in patient care and epidemiological research, are crucial in developing and performing cutting-edge clinical research in developing countries. Due to lack of local research capacity, these challenges have not been matched by the ability and capability of developing countries to carry out appropriate studies, the results of which will enable them deal with the health problems in their national contexts. An effort was made to build and strengthen local research capacity in Pakistan and conducted a 9-day workshop on epidemiology research methods to train the trainers.;Study objectives. (a) To assess the short and long-term effectiveness in terms of knowledge gain from the epidemiologic research training workshop offered to participants by face-to-face (F2F) and Video-teleconferencing (VTC) methods in Pakistan; (b) to assess the impact of the workshop on students' future career goals in both F2F and VTC groups and (c) to assess the cost-effectiveness of VTC relative to F2F instruction of training.;Methods. This was a prospective study on 40 F2F and 18 VTC health care professional with post-graduate degrees. A 9-day epidemiological research training workshop was conducted by 5 research faculty from University of Pittsburgh who developed course contents. Pretest and post-test1 were on 1st and last day of the workshop respectively. Post-test2 was conducted after one year of the workshop. Cost of both teaching methods were obtained using ingredient method and cost-effective ratios were calculated.;Results. The total study sample included 56 and 49 for the short-term and long-term workshop assessment. Within each group, paired sample t-test showed significant improvement in scores after the completion of workshop (P<0.001 for F2F and VTC). In F2F, mean scores increased from 11.13 (pre-test) to 15.08 (post-test1) and in VTC scores increased from 10.67 (pre-test) to 13.22(post-test1). After one year, post-test2 scores remained higher than pretest scores in both the groups (2-sample T-test P=0.11) and were not statistically significant. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...