“It is so inspiring and mind blowing to expand leadership ability in real life and make a difference to patients and society.” - Roche Participant
In June 2019, the eighth group of NJIA leaders came together in Bukoba, Tanzania to develop their leadership skills and co-create ideas to tackle the cervical cancer burden. “NJIA” means “path” in Kiswahili and is the name of the leadership development collaboration between Pepal, F. Hoffmann la-Roche, ICAP Tanzania and MoHCDGEC Tanzania to combat cervical cancer in Kagera Region, Tanzania.
This cohort was the first of its kind, inviting a delegation from Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation Uganda, Ministry of Health Uganda and Uganda Cancer Institute to participate in the programme and pilot innovation ideas for improving cervical cancer prevention and treatment across five districts in Uganda’s Rwenzori region.
“As Ministry of Health, we have seen NJIA’s work improving leadership skills of our leaders for better cervical cancer prevention management. We think it would be good to scale up this program to other parts of Tanzania using cervical cancer prevention as an entry point to improve the leadership skills of district and regional health leaders to improve their day to day performance.” - Dr. Safina Yuma, Head of Reproductive Cancer Unit, MoHGCDEC, Tanzania
Pilot innovation projects will be implemented across seven districts in Tanzania and five in Uganda ranging from strengthening treatment referral systems to coordinated HPV vaccine awareness campaigns. Make sure to check back to the blog over the next few months to follow project progress.
