ASCEND Launches its Inaugural Writing Retreat in India

From July 29 to August 5 2013, Professor Brian Oldenburg, Program Director of the ASian Collaboration for Excellence in Non-communicable Disease (ASCEND) Research Network, along with Program Team Naanki Pasricha and Allison Byrnes from the GHSU attended the 3rd ASCEND Teaching Block Program and inaugural ASCEND Writing Retreat at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, Kerala, India. They were joined by 31 ASCEND Trainees, as well as ASCEND Faculty members from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and India.

During the Teaching Block, trainees, attended many workshops and forums and presented their own research in the 2^nd ASCEND “mini” conference. This was the second and final teaching block for the cohort 2 trainees who for the remainder of the ASCEND Program will focus on the dissemination of their ASCEND project research findings. The Inaugural ASCEND Writing Retreat was conducted for the first cohort of trainees and aimed to assist trainees with refining their manuscripts for publication. This Retreat was facilitated by Prof Wah Yun Low from University of Malaya who is Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health. This was a unique opportunity for trainees to receive direct feedback from the editor of a journal.

The program was a huge success and was widely reported in local newspapers including The Hindu and The New Indian Express. The ASCEND Program is funded by the Fogarty Centre for International Health, US NIH.