Building Capacity for Cancer Research in the Era of COVID-19: Implementation and Results From an International Virtual Clinical Research Training Program in Zambia

Abstract

PURPOSE The incidence of cancer in sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly, yet cancer research in the region continues to lag. One contributing factor is limited exposure to clinical research among trainees. We describe implementation and results of a virtual clinical research training program for Zambian clinical oncology fellows developed jointly by the Cancer Diseases Hospital in Zambia and the MD Anderson Cancer Center to address this need. METHODS The clinical research training program consisted of 14 weekly virtual lectures, development of research questions by Zambian clinical oncology fellows, assignment of faculty and peer mentors, longitudinal mentorship of research protocols, and anonymous precourse and postcourse surveys. The paired t-test was used to analyze the change in academic self-efficacy scores. RESULTS Fourteen Zambian clinical oncology fellows participated. Senior fellows were paired with research mentors, leading to the development of eight research protocols. A total of 70 meetings and 126 hours of mentorship occurred with a median of seven meetings and 15 hours per pairing. The precourse and postcourse survey response rates were 86% and 79%, respectively. There were statistically significant increases in nine of 12 academic self-efficacy domains. The largest gains were in ability to independently perform research ( P < .001) and research mentorship ( P = .02) with an average increase of 1.5 points on a five-point scale in both domains. CONCLUSION The Cancer Diseases Hospital MD Anderson Cancer Center clinical research training program for Zambian clinical oncology fellows led to increases in multiple academic self-efficacy domains among participants, formation of longitudinal mentorship groups with both faculty and peer mentors, and development of Zambian-led research protocols, demonstrating the feasibility of implementing a virtual model. This may be especially relevant because of shifting international collaboration paradigms after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Radiation Oncology Research in Asia: Current Status and a Peep Into the Future From the Federation of Asian Organizations for Radiation Oncology

“… 16 Additional endeavors such as virtual clinical research training programs have been implemented and developed jointly by cancer centers in Africa and the United Sates for clinical research training of clinical oncology fellows in the region. 17 Expansion of such virtual educational platforms in Asia can reduce the cost of training and enhance accessibility, and FARO is further working in this direction. Majority of the participants in the survey have expressed their interest toward participation in clinical research courses organized by the FARO research committee and have supported central coordination for conduct of research in the region.…”

Virtual medical research mentoring

“…Although these efforts have demonstrated the feasibility of virtual research mentoring, most remained institution specific. Meanwhile, we believe that virtual research mentoring may help break the bounds of nationality and facilitate participation in international research, an idea already shown to be plausible in a small, highly structured cancer research programme 11 . The relevance of virtual research mentoring was further reinforced by the COVID‐19 pandemic, which forced many in‐person learning activities, including research mentoring, to switch to virtual settings.…”

“…Whilst COVID-19 did not motivate the founding of our programme, we believe that COVID-19 has fundamentally changed medical education practices, with greater recognition of the potential and importance of virtual medical education. 11,12 Overall, we believe that our experience is ever more relevant to medical educators today, a belief that constituted the motivation for this article.…”

“…Although we started in 2015 as a smaller group of researchers in Hong Kong, years of development have transformed the group into a semi‐structured international mentoring programme aimed at enhancing mentees' research skills and, hence, output. Whilst COVID‐19 did not motivate the founding of our programme, we believe that COVID‐19 has fundamentally changed medical education practices, with greater recognition of the potential and importance of virtual medical education 11,12 . Overall, we believe that our experience is ever more relevant to medical educators today, a belief that constituted the motivation for this article.…”

“…Meanwhile, we believe that virtual research mentoring may help break the bounds of nationality and facilitate participation in international research, an idea already shown to be plausible in a small, highly structured cancer research programme. 11 The relevance of virtual research mentoring was further reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many in-person learning activities, including research mentoring, to switch to virtual settings. Therefore, we hereby present our experience with an accessible-distributed model of virtual international medical research collaboration and multi-level mentoring.…”