About I-TECH
A collaboration between the University of Washington and the University of California, San Francisco
The International Training and Education Center on HIV (I-TECH), one of the largest HIV training programs in the world, works at the invitation of Ministries of Health and the U.S. government to increase human and institutional capacity in countries hardest hit by the AIDS crisis. I-TECH was founded in 2002 by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HRSA wanted to expand its successful program of domestic AIDS training centers to an international setting and worked with the CDC to create I-TECH. Today, with additional funding from USAID and others, I-TECH sponsors training and educational programs in 25 countries with 180 staff working from 10 local offices in the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Africa, and Asia, and a network of 100 NGOs. I-TECH has also created a wide range of educational materials to support training, and maintains a public database of 1,200 training resources from more than 300 organizations.
I-TECH primarily works on activities that contribute to the achievement of the (U.S.) President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and program activities are under way in nearly all the activity categories funded by PEPFAR. I-TECH is helping countries scale-up anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS; reduce stigma and discrimination; increase health worker knowledge on HIV/AIDS; produce educational materials and approaches that support transfer of learning from classroom to workplace; and integrate AIDS care with other critical health and economic development needs
I-TECH's primary activities include:Designing needs and capacity assessments. I-TECH conducts assessments that include search, compilation, and analysis of existing data (e.g., epidemiology, surveillance); data gap analysis and collection and development of new data sets; identification of local service and training resources and needs; facility surveys; and ongoing field management and stakeholder involvement to ensure relevance and continuous quality improvement. This service represents an ongoing, collaborative effort integrated into U.S. government strategic plans addressing short and long-term objectives.
Mentoring on clinical care and program management. I-TECH provides training in a five-level framework that ranges from classroom-based didactic and skills-building sessions (levels 1-2) to mentoring (levels 3-4) to long-term decision support (level 5). Mentoring of clinicians, clinical educators, and health program managers is currently the primary emphasis across I-TECH's global portfolio. I-TECH also has the capacity to develop, review, and adapt clinical protocol and standards of care; provide continuing clinical education via distance learning formats; design and evaluate patient education materials (e.g., social marketing, health communication); and support home-based care programming.
Producing instructional materials. I-TECH has the capacity to review, analyze, adapt and/or translate regionally appropriate curricula, competency curricula, and sample curricula. I-TECH also offers full-scale production capacity in a variety of training and educational material such as educational theater, training-of-trainer manuals, facilitator guides, participant manuals, brochures, pocket guides, posters, CD-ROM-based toolkits, and video-based training materials. I-TECH also compiles lessons learned and best practices, and supports distance learning sessions with video and other multimedia. In addition to its in-house capabilities, I-TECH collaborates with local companies to build their capacity in instructional design and media production.
Conducting monitoring and evaluation. I-TECH's well-developed monitoring and evaluation capacity includes translating standards of care into measurable indicators of progress; evaluating training outcomes; conducting cost/benefit analyses on the cost of training as a capacity development strategy; investigating operational questions to enhance organizational capacity; collecting information on knowledge, attitude, and behaviour; field testing of instructional materials; measurement of goals; and design of continuous quality improvement plans. I-TECH uses databases to facilitate data collection and reporting and has the capacity to store data at the country level and to array data in multiple ways, including by PEPFAR program target area and by country.
Developing organizational capacity. I-TECH works with individuals, groups and organizations to facilitate situational analyses and strategic planning; provide technical assistance and training on human resource management, supervision and policy development; assist with development and fundraising; design health informatics programs; establish quality assurance/control/ management approaches; train on values-based leadership; develop formal partnerships and alliances (including multi-sectoral collaborations); enhance stakeholder involvement; and build national TB and AIDS program collaborations.
Background
I-TECH is based at the University of Washington (UW) Center for AIDS and STD (a WHO Collaborating Center), and is a collaborative effort between the UW and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The Center for AIDS and STD is the largest clinical training and research program for AIDS and STD in the world, and maintains close ties to UW and Seattle-based global health programs such as the Fogarty International AIDS Research and Training Program, the Gates/Packard Population Leadership Program, Health Alliance International, PATH, the Gates Foundation, and other programs in the region. At UCSF, I-TECH works closely with the AIDS Research Institute and is a major partner in the HRSA-funded HIV/AIDS Twinning Center, which supports twinning partnerships and volunteer activities worldwide to strengthen capacity for HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment.I-TECH's Leadership includes the Principal Investigator of I-TECH, King K. Holmes, MD, PhD, an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease and clinical epidemiology at UW. Working with him are Directors, Ann Downer, EdD, and Michael Reyes, MD, MPH. All bring extensive experience in clinical education, HIV/AIDS clinical care, and educational program design to the management of I-TECH.
Acknowledgements
The Clinical Mentoring Toolkit developers are grateful to many authors who created the resources included in this project. Special thanks to the staff members and consultants at the International Training and Education Center on HIV (I-TECH) at the University of Washington and University of California, San Francisco, and its affiliated sites around the world, and to University of Washington Creative Services team of Barb Macfadden, Becky Smurr, and Aaron Egaas.
For I-TECH, the project leads were Jennifer Mas Gilvydis, MPH and Chris Behrens, MD.
This Toolkit was developed by the University of Washington International Training and Education Center on HIV (I-TECH), with funding from Cooperative Agreement U91HA06801 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Agency (HRSA). It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of CDC or HRSA.