Research

A pilot study performed in 2008-2009 in collaboration with the Cameroonian Ministry of Public Health helped demonstrate the potential burden of injury on the largest public hospital in Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon. The UCSF Center for Global Surgical Studies continues this collaboration with the Ministry to develop and expand a National Trauma Registry with the aim of providing ongoing injury surveillance and to demonstrate the burden of trauma on the health system in Cameroon. Findings from this registry will help inform national injury prevention policy and will set the foundation for establishing hospital-based trauma care quality improvement programs. The National Trauma Registry currently has three hospital sites and will eventually scale to six.

Data collected from the National Trauma Registry continues to inspire various research projects. Examples of these projects include: (1) development of methods to assess the economic status of injured patients using a limited number of economic indicators; (2) predictors of trauma outcomes using machine learning; (3) the use of telephone-administered survey to follow up on injured patients post-discharge; and (4) the identification of potential barriers to accessing care for the most socioeconomically disadvantaged.

The Center is interested in understanding the geospatial distribution of health facilities with emergency surgical capacity in Nairobi with respect to road traffic incidents. Our primary objective is to help our partners in Nairobi determine where to optimally establish the next trauma center within the city.

The Center has been piloting a trauma registry and a general surgery registry at the Soroti Regional Referral Hospital in Soroti, Eastern Uganda since mid-2016 and early 2017, respectively. The goals of the registries are to track the epidemiology of injury and other surgical conditions and to track the processes and outcomes of trauma and general surgical care at the hospital.

Like the National Trauma Registry in Cameroon, the overall objective of the trauma registry at the Soroti Regional Referral Hospital is to identify opportunities to improve injury prevention efforts as well as the treatment and care of the injured. Similarly, the objective of the general surgery registry is to help characterize and appropriately respond to the burden of surgical disease at the Soroti Regional Referral Hospital.

The Center spearheads several smaller projects in our efforts to better understand the burden and care of injury and other surgical diseases in Soroti. A few examples of such projects include a cost-effectiveness analysis of trauma surgery, an assessment of blood donation and blood transfusion processes, and a geospatial analysis of trauma incidences and access to trauma care.

National health plans are important for priority-setting and resource allocation in countries. Despite the growing evidence that essential surgery, obstetrics, and anesthesia are cost-effective and affordable, they have traditionally received less consideration in the national health plans of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The goal of National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anesthesia Plans (NSOAPs) is to fill the health policy gaps in LMICs with regards to essential surgery.

The Center is interested in understanding NSOAPs and how they can be developed and implemented in LMICs, including in its primary partner countries like Cameroon and Uganda.