Division Office, HSID

The mandate of the Health Systems and Infectious Diseases Division (HSID) is to strengthen national health systems through operations research. Researchers in HSID design, test, and facilitate replication of cost-effective and sustainable research outcomes for rural and urban settings with particular emphasis on infectious diseases. HSID provides expertise to the Centre in the areas of operations and health systems research, as well as emerging infectious diseases and evaluation of new vaccines.

The objective of the Division is to apply research tools to accelerate the evolution of optimal health policy which saves lives and prevents sufferings and economic loss. It takes research findings from fieldwork conducted within the Centre and elsewhere and provides a testing ground to determine what adaptations are needed to make positive findings from artificial controlled research studies applicable to real world settings.

The Division uses its own "real world" field sites. In contrast with Matlab where health services are delivered by ICDDR,B staff in a manner unlike the way services are delivered in Bangladesh, HSID operates two rural field stations in Mirsarai upazila of Chittagong District and Abhoynagar upazilla of Jessore District, and also an urban slum setting at Kamalapur in Dhaka city. In all three settings, people depend upon government and NGO-provided health services.

HSID provides infrastructure and expertise for Centrewide operations research with adaptation and implementation of benefits of interventions identified in "research work" into "real world" applications.

The Division focuses on a multi-disciplinary approach of inquiry through both quantitative and qualitative methods. It partners with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) and non-government organizations (NGOs) to facilitate testing of interventions in the Division’s research sites.

HSID houses two of the Centre's eight scientific programmes: the Inrectious Diseases and Vaccine Sciences Programme and the Health and Family Planning Systems Programme. In addition, the Division administers two multi-investigator, inter-divisional research projects: Scaling Up Zinc for Young Children with Diarrhoea (SUZY) Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and HIV/AIDS Youth Prevention Project funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Staff