The Hue Institute for Community Health Research is an international collaboration between Hue UMP, health departments in Thua Thien Hue, Da Nang, Khanh Hoa, Binh Dinh and Dak Lak, and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. The purpose is to assist provinces to improve staff capacity for evidence-based planning, monitoring and evaluation of services and disease prevention programs at provincial, district and community levels.

Prof. Dr. Cao Ngoc Thanh, Rector of Hue UMP, said, “Recently, health care in our nation has made excellent progress, such as declining infant and maternal mortality and increasing life expectancy. There are better treatments for people living with cancer, heart disease and other chronic conditions. However, in general, in comparison with leading world economies, our achievements are still modest. One barrier to continuous improvement is that we lack reliable health information. We need to enhance research into causes of disease and to evaluate and refine our services and thereby improve outcomes for patients and their families.”

Prof. Thanh said, “For too long, the universities have been somewhat separate from the front-line services. Our goals with this institute are to create a center for excellence in research and training and to build strong bridges between the university and community care.

The new institute extends from a decade-long relationship between Hue UMP and QUT. In the most recent three year period, the partners successfully managed a research center in Hue that supported a wide variety of projects in many communities; topics including musculoskeletal injuries among carpenters, pesticide contamination of field grown vegetables, reproductive health problems of garment factory workers, the social functioning of people living with Schizophrenia and the workforce development needs for preventive medicine doctors.

Prof. Michael Dunne from QUT is co-director of the Institute and an honorary professor at Hue University. He is optimistic about the future. “At QUT we have a practical focus. We are excited about the new institute because the direction of research will be determined by our Vietnamese partners. Our first priority is to undertake research that benefits health services. The institute will also strengthen scientific and ethical peer review and enable wider communication of research findings. It is a major commitment for us in central Vietnam and we plan to be here for the long term.”

The work is being supported financially for the next three years by The Atlantic Philanthropies (Vietnam) and QUT and has attracted additional support from Australian Government scholarship and fellowship programs./.

Nguyen Tuan

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