Good collaborative practice - persepectives from a paediatric Malaria vaccine trial in Ghana and Tanzania

This ethics project investigates what constitutes good collaborative practice in international health research partnerships. The research sets out to understand the roles and responsibilities of collaborative research partners operating in low resource settings from the perspectives of stakeholders in Ghana and Tanzania. The methodology is based on the inclusion of 52 semi-structured, interviews with major stakeholders in an international multicentre partnership between GlaxoSmithKline (GSK, Vaccine Developer) and the global health non-profit product developer PATH and its Malaria Vaccine Initiative program (PATH/MVI, Funder-Development Partner), (RTS, S) (NCT00866619). The project demonstrates that ethical governance is needed for international research partnerships to serve improved population health through local-leadership, building research capacity and effective integration with local health care settings. The project concludes with a proposition for a new research ethics framework based on principles of public health ethics entitled, The Global Population Approach.