What is Encourages?

Encourages stands for “Enhancing capacity of Vietnamese Researchers on publishing and dissemination of research on gender and sexuality.” The project is being implemented by the Consultation of Investment in Health Promotion (CIHP) and is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The project implementation period is 6 years and commenced in November 2003.

The aims of the project are to assist Vietnamese researchers improve the quality of their papers on gender, reproductive health and sexuality; and disseminate these papers amongst other researchers and policymakers.

Why is Encourages an important strategy?

Since its establishment in November 1999 by the 6 initiative founders, CIHP has steadily developed and evolved, yet has always remained committed to the goal of community health promotion. In particular, CIHP focuses on policy improvement assistance, capacity building, gender, empowerment of women, women’s and children’s healthcare and HIV/AIDS.

Recent domestic research has shown that there is remarkable waste due to research on overlapping topics. This is especially true for research conducted mostly for the purpose of an institution or a specific project alone. The findings and results are often neither shared amongst researchers and institutions nor disseminated to policymakers.

Another issue is that research results are not readily accessible due to financial barriers. In addition to financial difficulty, researchers’ limited skills in presenting and analyzing research are major barriers for effective dissemination of research in Vietnam and internationally.

For these reasons, CIHP has developed the Encourages project, which aims to:

1. Create a channel for disseminating research experience on gender and sexuality issues in Vietnam as well as in other countries worldwide.
2. Establish opportunities for Vietnamese researchers to discuss social and medical terms used in gender and sexuality studies, thereby improving the researchers’ analytical skills and the quality of their research.
3. Support researchers by enhancing their fundamental skills in developing reports and papers and thereby improving dissemination of research.

Activities of Encourages:

1. Collect unpublished research manuscripts on gender and sexuality in Vietnam; review, select and publish the documents.
2. Conduct capacity building training workshops for researchers to improve writing and presenting skills and provide discussion forums on gender and sexuality terms used in research.
3. Organize open forums that promote communication among leading researchers and policymakers to enhance the efficacy and application of research.
4. Provide information on gender- and sexuality-related issues on a searchable online database.

What is the focus of Encourages?

Topic:

1. Research manuscripts that analyze the relationship between gender and reproductive health, including: domestic violence, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV/AIDS.
2. Research on sexual health.

Methodology

1. Research manuscripts should (i) be conducted with the standard qualitative and/or quantitative research methods and (ii) ensure the reliability of the findings.
2. Research manuscripts of general analysis should meet high standards and reflect the use of systematic methods.

Structure and length of manuscripts

The structure and length of the research manuscripts will be determined based on the researcher’s interest following capacity building training workshops.

Contact Encourages

For more information and research manuscript submission, please contact us: encourages@cihp.org