As part of a new academic consortium effort, three institutions with deep knowledge and expertise in malaria—the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Harvard University, and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute—have joined together to offer a unique multidisciplinary leadership training activity for individuals with diverse backgrounds and broad experiences in malaria control and elimination.

Organized as a weeklong intensive training program, the Science of Eradication: Malaria leadership development course is specifically designed for those individuals with the potential to advance to leadership positions over the next 2-5 years.

The inaugural edition of the Science of Eradication: Malaria leadership course was held June 3 -11, 2012 at the Harvard Business School in Boston, MA. The course brought together more than 50 participants from over 25 countries, including Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tajikistan, and Zambia. Consortium partners, faculty, and malaria experts from around the world gathered to share their knowledge and expertise in foundational malaria topics such malaria biology and epidemiology; vector and parasite biology; application of vector control, drug, and vaccine strategies; economic/financial tools and strategies; lessons learned from past disease eradication campaigns; impact of social, historical, and political factors; surveillance techniques; and modeling to evaluate the effectiveness of eradication strategies.

Immediately following the ‘core’ course module, participants were also able to attend one of two specialized advanced course modules. Participants attending the 3-day Supply Chain Management module gained a deeper understanding of the critical role of supply chains in elimination and eradication, including supply/demand side drivers, incentives for intervention adoption, supply chain coordination for products with uncertain demand, and how to address key bottlenecks. The Dynamics of Malaria Transmission module provided participants with the opportunity to examine existing tools to reduce and prevent transmission, diagnostics to prevent/interrupt transmission, understanding changes in transmission patterns, current tools for low and moderate transmission, and new transmission blocking vaccine interventions.

In May 2013, the ISGlobal-Harvard University-Swiss TPH consortium convened a ‘core’ Science of Eradication: Malaria leadership development course (May 5-10, 2013) and a special advanced course module focused on Managing the End of Malaria (May 11-13, 2013), in Barcelona, Spain.