Prof Margaret Gyapong chairs Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee

The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), a global programme of scientific collaboration that helps facilitate, support and influence efforts to combat diseases of poverty., has announced Professor Margaret Gyapong as the new Chair of Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC).

TDR is co-sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Prof Gyapong took over the role from Professor Charles Mgone from January 2023, according to press release from TDR available to the Ghana News Agency.
A medical anthropologist by training, Professor Gyapong is currently Director of the Institute of Health Research and Coordinator of the Centre for Health Policy and Implementation Research at the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ghana.

The Centre was designated as a TDR Satellite Training Centre for Implementation Research in 2018 under her leadership.

Professor Gyapong has had a longstanding relationship with TDR – that helps facilitate, support and influence efforts to combat diseases of poverty since 1992.

She previously served as Vice-Chair of TDR’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Integrated Community-Based Interventions (2008-2010), co-Chair of TDR’s Technical Review Group on Social Science and Gender and member of the MIM/TDR Taskforce on Malaria Research Capability Strengthening in Africa (2003-2010).

Professor Gyapong has also been a member of the Partnership for Social Science in Infectious Diseases of Poverty, the WHO Steering Committee on Implementation Research (2011-2015) and the Steering Group for the WHO/GMP Global Technical Strategy on Malaria (2010–2013), as well as Chair of the WHO Lymphatic Filariasis Guidelines Development Group (2017).

She is a member of WHO’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Group on Neglected Tropical Diseases (STAG-NTD) and the WHO/AFRO Advisory Committee on Health Research and Development.

“I am humbled at this opportunity to Chair STAC. Having benefited from several training and research grants and being recognized several times by TDR, I see this as an opportunity to serve. I look forward to working with the team to ensure that we together work to achieve the objectives set out in the new TDR strategy,” said Professor Gyapong 

Source: GNA