PEER Health is a USAID program which supports developing country researchers at universities and institutions of higher education in low and middle income countries (LMICs). In keeping with President Obama’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) to leverage ‘whole of government’ for improved global health, this program addresses evidence gaps in developing countries by supporting research partnerships between developing country Principal Investigators (PI) and scientists currently supported by US federal science agencies.
PEER Health is a competitive small grants program designed to support early to mid-career scientists, primarily citizens of, low and middle income countries. The focus of the program is on ‘implementation science’ which USAID defines as: “application of systematic learning, research and evaluation to improve health practice, policy and programs in developing countries”. The implementation research supported by this program will not include randomized control trials (RCTs) for biomedical interventions. PEER Health provides a platform for USAID and other U.S. government agencies (USG) to support research on a specific global health topic or to support researchers in a specific LMIC or region. The first round of PEER Health (2012) included a global call for implementation research to address child survival bottlenecks.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council—collectively the U.S. National Academies (NAS)—are private, nonprofit institutions that advise the federal government and public on matters of science, technology, and health by establishing committees of experts to address critical technical and policy issues. Throughout a given year, the Academies convene hundreds of conferences, workshops, symposia, and standing committees, which attract the finest minds in academia and the public and private sectors. The National Academies has long-standing relationships with over a hundred foreign scientific academies including those in developing countries. The Division of Policy and Global Affairs at the National Academies has managed several grant research programs including the Pakistan-US S&T Cooperation Program, and the PEER Science program. The programmatic and scientific expertise resident at the National Academies make this organization an ideal convener for interagency collaboration around research.
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