CIDER Reflect and Relaunch

The School of Public Health research group CIDER held an event to reflect on its past, relaunch under a new name, the Centre for Integrated Data and Epidemiological Research (still with the same acronym CIDER), and recognize recent retirees who had contributed to engaged scholarship. The event started with Andrew Boulle describing CIDER’s origins in the early 2000s in the political, social and healthcare responses to the HIV and TB epidemics. Eric Goemaere from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and CIDER retirees, Katherine Hilderbrand and David Coetzee, described how the partnership between CIDER, MSF, Western Cape Government Health and the Treatment Action Campaign was instrumental in establishing the Khayelitsha antiretroviral treatment (ART) cohort, which demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of providing ART in South Africa. The Khayelitsha ART cohort provided the evidence to motivate for provision of ART across sub-Saharan Africa and has informed several World Health Organization guidelines as outlined by newly appointed CIDER Honorary Professor, Nathan Ford from WHO.  Head of Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness, Keith Cloete, recalled the key roles of health service managers, clinicians and data systems developers in the establishment of the Western Cape ART programme.

Moving on to the relaunch, the incoming CIDER Director, Emma Kalk, explained that the new name for CIDER recognises an expansion of its focus to integration and epidemiological analysis of health data across multiple domains including mental health, other non-communicable diseases, maternal and child health, community-orientated primary healthcare, and antimicrobial resistance, while maintaining our engagement with robust infectious disease science and commitment to quality service provision and health activism. The event ended with the Dean of Health Sciences, Lionel Green-Thompson acknowledging the role of recent retirees, Katherine Hilderbrand, David Coetzee and Morna Cornell in contributing to CIDER’s engaged scholarship journey and contribution.