Dear Tamar,

Could you please have a look at the below and let me know whether the ministry agrees with the suggested candidate?

Thank you and best regards,

Silviu

Dear Silviu,

I hope this message finds you well. The EURO/EHRN Secretariat would like to extend its gratitude to the Country Office for its support to the nomination process for the 2019 European Health Research Network workshop held in Vilnius, Lithuania from 27 to 29 November, which received very positive feedback from the country participants.

During the workshop, participants identified lack of funding as a key barrier to implementing (1) national health research system (NHRS) strengthening activities, and (2) the Action plan to strengthen the use of evidence, information and research for policy-making in the WHO European Region. As such, we identified a relevant funding call for research proposals from UK’s Medical Research Council and Department for International Development (DFID), where our partners from Brunel University London with whom we have collaborated on NHRS strengthening will lead on an application (submission deadline: 21 January 2020) with the aim of generating evidence on how to establish and strengthen the functional structure and dynamics of national health research systems (NHRS) in four LMICs (Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine) – a draft concept note is attached. We are also exploring the possibility for the Regional Office and/or Country Offices to participate in this grant application with our resource mobilization colleagues.

We are now in the process of identifying experts from each country who will serve as country lead for this potential research project, and have thought of Dr Lela Shengelia (National Center for Disease Control and Public Health) because of her expertise and experience in health research system strengthening and her role as the EHRN focal point in Georgia. Please advise if the country’s MOH would consider her appropriate or alternatively we would be very grateful for any recommendations from you or the national counterparts for this initiative.

Thanks very much in advance for any support that you will be able to extend on this, and we wish you the most wonderful holidays ahead.

Kind regards,

Tyrone