Project: Building Capacities in Gender Mainstreaming for Ethics Committee Members from Senegal to West Africa

Acronym	BCA-WA-ETHICS (Reference Number: CSA2018ERC-2314)
Duration	01/08/2019 - 31/07/2021
Project Topic	In sub-Saharan Africa, gender inequalities contribute to maintaining populations' susceptibility to infectious diseases. A lack of a gender perspective in research that develops prevention, diagnosis, and therapeutic technologies can result in solutions that become inefficacious, unsafe, and unacceptable for the most deprived ones. Gender mainstreaming, as a strategy to pursue gender equality, could help impede the occurrence of such adversities. It involves the systematic and rigorous inclusion of a gender perspective across all research stages. The integration of gender mainstreaming is an effective strategy for National Research Ethics Committees (NRECs) to pursue gender equality and to further safeguard protection of vulnerable research participants. In the context where the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak led to the urgent implementation of clinical trials that left a number of gendered ethics issues unsolved, the Senegalese NREC (hereafter CNERS) ambitions to become a leader of change in West African NRECs politics for gender equality. The main aim of BCA-WA-ETHICS is to improve the capacities of scientists members of West African NRECs to mainstream a gender perspective in their institution's governance, evaluation and inspection processes. Specific objectives are (i) to build CNERS capacities to evaluate research proposals from a gendered perspective and (ii) to inspect if sex and gender-based analysis are incorporated in research; (iii) to help CNERS consolidate platforms to promote gender mainstreaming across West African NRECs, and (iv) to build synergies between CNERS and West African NRECs to harmonise gender-informed review and inspection frameworks. Project activities are distributed in four work packages: Training; Networking; Research and Translation; Management and Dissemination. Thanks to these activities, at the end of the project, trained scientists will be better equipped to undertake gender-informed review and inspection activities; the barriers women scientists face to ensure gender representation and improve their career prospects would be mapped; a CNERS-guided Secretariat would have provided support to West African NRECs to integrate gender mainstreaming; and stakeholders' consensus would have been reached to publish a White Paper with recommendations for gender mainstreaming across West African NRECs. These outputs, among others, will aim at the expected impact of BCA-WA-ETHICS: West African NRECs with strengthened capacity to ensure gender equality in health research. BCA-WA-ETHICS will be coordinated by Zaragoza University, the CNERS, and the Institut de Recherche en Santé, de Surveillance Epidémiologique et de Formations (IRESSEF), with support from the Senegalese Ministry of Health-Gender Division and from the Network of Ethics Committee Members in West Africa.
Network	EDCTP2
Call	Ethics and regulatory capacities 2018

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Universidad de Zaragoza	Coordinator	Spain
2	Ministry of Health and Social Action, Senegal	Partner	Senegal
3	Réseau Africain de Recherche sur le SIDA	Partner	Senegal