Director’s Foreword The Director’s foreword is always the last piece of our biennial reports to be written, after reading the full draft of the contents, and reflecting on the past two years. This is particularly so for this report which covers the 2019/20 period, as in my, and probably many colleagues’ memories, 2019 has all but disappeared behind the life- and world-changing year that 2020 turned out to be. We have published reports of our activities every two years for about the past twenty years. This year we are publishing it electronically for the first time, perhaps reflecting the rapidly accelerated replacement of print with on-line resources (although I don’t think I will change my preference for reading in print). But while the electronic format will make the report easily available around the world, easily readable on mobile phones and tablets, I am also aware that the ubiquitous presence of on-line meetings, digital resources and a world of information that can be tapped any time does not mean equitable access. When we surveyed our students and short course participants last year, we learned that while access has increased substantially, bandwidth, data access and data cost, remain substantial barriers. In this report we reflect on the changes we have introduced and will be introducing to our postgraduate programmes – and the big shifts in our continuing professional development activities, having had to cancel the SOPH Winter School for the first time in 28 years. Reconciling the constraints imposed by COVID-19 with the needs of our audiences, and making use of emerging opportunities, has been a prevailing theme of (virtual) conversations in the SOPH. Our well-tested, blended teaching modalities which have been in place and evolving since 2000, provided us with a really valuable infrastructure when, in early 2020, along with the rest of the world, we moved our offerings completely on-line due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Developing the internal capacity and exploring the technological possibilities to offer the best possible educational experience virtually to our student audience, while also taking account of continuing barriers and inequities in access to the digital world, will be an ongoing and exciting endeavour as well as a steep learning curve for all of us over the next few years.
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We also reflect on our students’ resilience. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit health services in Southern Africa and beyond, we expected that many of our enrolled students may struggle to progress with their studies as most are health professionals and managers within their public health sectors and have been on the frontline of the pandemic. To our great surprise this was not the case, however. There were very few dropouts, pass rates have been remarkably high, and even requests for extensions on assignment submissions remained the exception. We have been enormously impressed by, and grateful for, our students’ commitment to their studies and their resilience to continue under very difficult circumstances. They all deserve a big shout-out and our full commitment to do everything to support them in the completion of their degrees. In 2020, 28 students received their Postgraduate Diploma, 23 received their Master degree, and three students received their doctorates in Public Health. The SOPH’s research continues to be anchored by its two NRF SARChI research chairs and the Extra-Mural SAMRC Research Unit. They not only shape our strong focus on health policy and systems research, but also substantially support capacity building through a carefully structured and innovative doctoral support programme, doctoral bursaries and post-doctoral fellowships. Thematically, much of our research resists easy categorisation: many of our projects – whether in HIV, maternal, child and adolescent health, food security or non-communicable diseases – incorporate questions of systems functioning, governance arrangements, gender perspectives, political economy and social justice. These pages cannot do justice to the entirety of our research portfolio, but we have highlighted a few projects as an indication of the scope of our work. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted our research in a number of ways, as it did around the world. Face-to-face field work activities came to a halt and, where possible, were substituted with virtual engagements (such as telephonic interviews). Other project activities had to be suspended or postponed, and projects have had to adapt to looming funding cuts. But we also responded to the multiple, sudden research needs generated by the pandemic; for example, we supported the Western Cape Department of Health’s reflections on governance and health worker wellness during COVID-19; participated in
