The objective of the capacity building project is to develop research-, educational- and clinical kompetence within mental health at the Bahr el Ghazal university in South Sudan.

The project will carry out the following activities:

• To complete a mental health project in South Sudan: prevalence of mental health, poverty and displacement due to war as determinants of mental health problems and carry out a mental health intervention programme. Further to use the konowledge gained to develop a model for further development of mental health services in the region.
• Education programmes: bachelor -, masters degrees og phd-s,  within mental health  and international  community health, focusing awailability, equality and human rights.
• To fund minor local facilities.

The implementation study of the Capacity Building Project

The objective of the implementation study is to gain knowledge that will strengthen the effectuation and completion of both this particular study as well as similar further studies.

The research question is multifaceted. The study will throw light on challenges encountered when implementing western ’modern’ health services, medical knowledge and methods in communities characterised by traditional understanding of mental illness and treatment. Adding to this is the population’s sufferings from poverty of the extreme kind in a society undermined by many years of civil war due to religious and ethnic conflicts.

A cultural approach is chosen in order to secure both cultural and ethnic issues to be addressed (in this respect also possible religious contrasts):

• The challenges in Sudan (equal access to health servies for all ethnic groups)
• The relationship between Sudan and a western country as Norway (traditional vs. western medicine)

The suggested approach is a ‘circular’ and exploring approach. Qualitative methods with personal interviews and field visits will be used to capture the complexity in the case study (based on for instance the works of Robert Stake). This approach is suitable as a teoretical model for programme evaluation, - and as a method to organise the research process.

The model:
A fram suggested for analysing the implementation of complex projects and programmes.
Three important items:

1. Analyseing the aims and the objectives - the actors’ explicit and implicit understanding of the aim and the objectives of the programme.
2. The implementation process - specifying variables, activities, actions that are relevant and important. Within this topic one should expect a constantly re-definition of the actors’ understanding of the relevant and important topics with respect to the many variables, activities and actions.
3. The results evaluated according to the aim and objectives - what kind of activities did the programme/project complete/realise, and the quality of the activities and the results.

The project is a joint efford between the Norwegian partners the Department of psychiatry at the University of Oslo and SINTEF Health Research and the Sudanese partners Affad University and the University of Bahr el Ghazal.

This project is funded by NUFU, a programme for ’Independent academic cooperation based on initiatives from researchers and institutions in the South and their partners in Norway’. The funding is allocated over Norad and is administered by SIU, The Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education which is a public Norwegian agency that promotes international cooperation in education and research.