Our projects

• Towards student centered medical education at UNIFACISA, Brazil

In 2021 SHE collaborates started a long-term project with the university Unifacisa in Brazil. Unifacisa is a private university located in Paraíba state and has started its work in 1999. The university offers degree programs in the field of humanity, technology, and health. Since 2006, the university started a 12-semester medical program. The medical faculty of Unifacisa now wants to move toward more innovative education. UM experts will guide the faculty using a step-by-step approach through a redesign of their 6-year medical curriculum towards an integrated, spiral curriculum. By building capacity among the staff of Unifacisa they will be enabled to develop and implement a student centered program. The project is divided into a preparation phase (year 1-3) and an implementation phase (year 4-7). Each year tailor-made workshops are given and an evaluation is conducted to continue the development of content for the upcoming years. 

• Développement des capacités en épidémiologie de terrain contre la Covid-19 et
• Appui à la réforme du program de médecine

In 2017 SHE Collaborates started to cooperate with CINOP Global, Skills-Meducation and Cordaid in a project in Burundi to strengthen the health professions education in three universities (University of Burundi, Ngozi University and the University Espoir d’Afrique). SHE Collaborates main responsibility in this collaboration is to support the reform of the medical curriculum from a traditionally teacher centered to a modern problem- and community based program, including the development of a Skillslabs within the three universities. This is done by training the faculty of the three universities, coaching them in the process of design and implementation of the new curriculum, and supporting them in setting up the management structure for the curriculum.

• Sustainable education for people in crisis and emergency situations

With this Nuffic project SHE Collaborates aims to improve the quality of education for refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Ethiopia. During the 1.5 years of the project, a training-of-trainers (ToT) approach will be used to develop a basic teacher training course for a low-resource environment. This course will combine teacher skills with health education in a way that the teaching modules function as a vehicle to transfer health education. A child-to-child approach will be used to reach the children in the classroom with health education, as well as their siblings.

• Health information and technology for improved health education in South-East Asia (HITIHE)

• Improve healthcare in Remote regions by online-training of health professionals

• Develop a competency based curriculum for the school of Physiotherapy

• Improving education and employment prospects of vulnerable youth in Iraq through blended and virtual education

SHE Collaborates received a Nuffic-grant for a project in Iraq, which focusses on three aspects: Improving the quality of teaching competencies of teachers, helping the universities to design distance based education and aligning the education to the labormarket (all three aims with special attention for refugee-students). In this project, 3 Iraqi universities are involved: University of Fallujah, Cihan University and Al Mansour University College. By offering workshops for their faculty and helping them in their course design (partially face to face in Jordan and partially online), we hope to contribute to improving the quality of education for students in a region that is known for large numbers of refugees that have suffered from decades of war. Additionally, the project entails also special scholarship programmes for refugee-students. In this project, we will make use of the expertise of our colleagues from SHE and UM Library and collaborate with Luminus Technical University College (LTUC), which is located in Jordan and has extensive experience in educational projects in Iraq. The project will started in September 2020 and will run until March 2023. 

• Development of Skills for Health Professions Education in East Africa (SHEA)
• Follow-up Support of Training Program in Bachelor of Science in Medical Psychology
• Development of a Master program in Family Medicine

In early 2020, SHE Collaborates won a project tender to embark on a project collaboration with North Coast Medical Training college, Pwani University and 4Kenya TVET in Mtwapa, Kenya. The project aims at establishing a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in health professions education and strengthening Public-Private-Partnerships.  The project outputs focus on capacity building in the areas of Skills training and education, entrepreneurship, community based education and services, e-learning, biomedical instrumentation, as well as the establishment of a regional branch of a Skills training material supplier. Dutch consortium partners in this project are Skills Meducation and the Hanze University for Applied Sciences. 

• EDU Medical and Maastricht University cooperate on quality of teaching
• Supervision report

EDU, Europe's first digital institution of higher education offering a medical degree, and Maastricht University/SHE Collaborates have started a 5-year collaboration. This partnership is aimed at ensuring the quality of teaching medicine at EDU. Currently, EDU has approximately 60 students in their bachelor program and is in the process of developing the master program in Human medicine as well. The full program will last 5 years. Starting from the first year, the bachelor program consists of 3 cycles, each with 8 week blocks (online) followed by a 4 week clinical rotation in hospitals in Germany. The concept of problem-based learning is part of their teaching approach as well.

SHE Collaborates manages the project, in which experts from Maastricht University will assist EDU in their mandate to offer a high quality educational program through for instance curriculum review, capacity building of staff and to bench marking student performance with other medical programs by introducing progress testing. Visits to observe the teaching practice in the affiliated hospitals are also part of the collaboration. The evaluation is intended to comment on the quality of teaching concerning meaningful, relevant and measurable learning outcomes.

Maastricht University experts will get access to EDU’s digital teaching and learning platform – the Digital Campus – and all related systems for the design, creation, implementation and management of the curriculum. This gives Maastricht University the opportunity to learn from this innovative approach, the digital environment and early clinical contacts.

• Vibrações: Implementing a stepped-care model approach to design and develop a Mozambican youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health website.

In 2021 SHE collaborates started a capacity-building project in Mozambique to design and developed a sexual and reproductive health website for Mozambican youth. The project trains participants of UCM and Coalizão in all aspects of building and maintaining the website, such as intervention mapping, target group research, technical training, content creation, usability research, and online promotion. The future Vibrações website will serve as a reliable source of information on SRHR-related topics. The website allows for a unique opportunity to not only offer relevant and youth-friendly content and resources but also to improve the reach and quality of counseling services while building the capacity of staff to manage and maintain a high-quality online health resource. The Vibrações website aims to reach young people where they are, on the screens of their mobile devices.

• Support in the development of medical skills- and simulation centre

The Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ljubljana (UL MF) is the oldest higher education teaching and scientific research institution in the fields of medicine, dental medicine, and biomedical sciences in Slovenia. The aims of the collaboration with SHE Collaborates are to set up a skills training centre for the undergraduate medical program, a specialist skills simulation, and for dentist skills. The intention is that after a 3,5 years project collaboration in 3 phases: (1) ‘Getting Started’; (2) Curriculum Development and Implementation, and (3) Consolidation, UL is able to operate their own skills training centre independently from UM; but with ongoing collaboration in research & education. The collaboration started in June 2020 is scheduled until 2024. 

• Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices - Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education

A partnership between:

• University Pretoria
• Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University
• University of the Witwatersrand
• University of Namibia
• Welwitchia Health Training Centre
• University College Dublin
• Maastricht University
• University of Turku

This project aims to provide a culturally-responsive quality health and science education founded on evidence-based research and directed at enabling students to address the needs of the individual, the family, the community, and the population, despite numerous resource constraints in Africa. This involves, but is not limited to, the training of staff in health professions education through advanced degrees and online courses, use of advanced technologies both in and outside the classroom, re-evaluation of curricula, and in assessing the knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and competencies of our students in an ever-changing academic and global environment.

The Dirisana+ project has been divided into six broad research themes, namely curriculum development; perception and attitudes toward inter-professional education (IPE) models; academic and research literacy; evaluations and assessments in health sciences education; using technology and online modalities to advance teaching and learning; and socio-cultural diversity.

Maastricht University contributes to the capacity development of staff through the supervising of course degrees, provision of training and workshop attendance.

• Adopting the Maastricht Medical Curriculum in a new medical program at UCP

Adopting the Maastricht Medical Curriculum in a new medical program at UCP From 2017 onwards, SHE Collaborates cooperates with Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) to establish the first international, problem-based and private medical school in Portugal. The curriculum that Católica Medical School implements is based on the program that Maastricht University in the Netherlands uses in its medical school, with minor adaptations to comply with the specific Portuguese context. The past years SHE and UCP built the program together - not only the content of the program and its accreditation, but also the realization of the buildings and the educational training of the Portuguese staff. On September 13, 2021, the first 56 students were welcomed and the Prime Minister of Portugal, the Cardinal of Lisbon, and the Dutch Ambassador, other ministers and dignitaries and SHE Collaborates staff, attended the festive opening ceremony. The start of this new medical programme is not only innovative and promising for UCP, students and staff, but for health education and healthcare in Portugal in general as well. Throughout the development and implementation of this curriculum, UM staff assures the quality by providing and supporting UCP staff development and staff exchange, with a team of Maastricht staff present in Portugal to assist in the implementation. The collaboration with Maastricht University will continue for at least six years, until after the first batch has graduated in 2027. It is the intention that during the project period UCP becomes experienced enough to run their own medical curriculum independently from UM, meeting equal quality standards.

• Strengthening Student Centered Learning in the Medicine Program

• Designing and implementing a new Medical college

• Establishing an Internal Quality System at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Seiyun University: Phase I

• Improving quality of Health Profession educators, by offering a specialization track in the Bachelor of Education

The University of Makeni (UNIMAK) and the School of Midwifery Makeni (SoMM) want to develop a specialization track in Health Professions Education (HPE), as part of the Bachelor in Education. This track is aimed at (health) professionals involved in the teaching of future health professionals. SoMM and UNIMAK currently lack the expertise to set up this specialization track and this project will support to develop the required expertise including curriculum design, enabling learning in students, student centered teaching designs, interactive teaching skills and assessment in health professions education.

• Bootcamp for education; short term training for Physiotherapy teachers in Sierra Leone

The Bachelor of Science in Physiotherapy at Tonkolili District College of Health Sciences started in 2017 and is expected to give a boost to the profession of Physiotherapists in Sierra Leone. However, since the program is newly developed and teaching capacity and experience is limited, there is a need to further improve the teaching skills of the faculties and clinical instructors to deliver quality improvement of this program. This requires teachers who do not only have content knowledge on physiotherapy, but also know how to get their knowledge and skills across to the PT trainees. This Tailor Made Training will upgrade the expertise of the academic staff of the BSc. in Physiotherapy and improve their general and skill teaching as well as improve the quality of learning for a PT-trainee in a workplace setting.

• Bringing Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights to life in Menstrual Health Management trainings in Uganda

In Uganda, girls still lag behind boys in terms of completion of primary education. One of the causes of this is the lower class attendance of girls during menstruation days and school drop-out at the onset of menstruation that often translates into teenage and child marriage.

While there have been significant efforts made by the Ugandan government and other development actors in support of Menstrual Health Management (MHM) initiatives, a recently conducted institutional assessment (commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Sports) suggests that implementation and uptake of MHM guidelines for schools have not been at the desired level.

With this TMT+, the WASH Alliance Uganda wants to achieve a comprehensive approach for Menstrual Health Management MHM with integration of SRHR issues within its current programs. Existing structures will be used to cascade the knowledge, for example by reaching out to women groups, Village Health Teams (VHTs), health assistance and WASH entrepreneurs. The overall objective is to create an enabling environment for women and girls in schools and their surrounding communities so that Menstrual Health issues can be openly discussed and they can receive support from men and boys. This project concerns strengthening the capacity of Master trainers of the Ugandan partners to better equip teachers with the didactic skills and knowledge to use the MoES supported MHM curriculum as the entry point to deliver comprehensive SRHR to school aged boys and girls.