The INTEGRATION consortium held its annual meeting of the third year of the project on 21st and 22nd March 2024 in Paris, both in person and virtually.

The event took place at Médecins Sans Frontières/Epicentre headquarter, and was organized under the leadership of Dr. Valérie Briand, former researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and current director of Epicentre’s research department.

The INTEGRATION Consortium was welcomed by the general director of Epicentre, Klaudia Porten, while the annual meeting was started officially by Prof. Kassoum Kayentao (Université des Sciences, des Techniques et des Technologies de Bamako – USTTB, Mali), coordinator of this research. The EDCTP Project Officer, Montserrat Blazquez-Domingo, joined remotely.

The meeting was attended by all the European and sub-Saharan African countries involved in the consortium: Mali (USTTB), Burkina Faso (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique –  CNRST / Institut de Recherche en Science de la Santé – IRSS, Principal Investigator Prof. Halidou Tinto), France (IRD, Principal Investigator Dr. Valérie Briand), United Kingdom (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine – LSTM, Principal Investigator Dr. Jenny Hill) and Italy (R-Evolution Worldwide, Principal Investigator Dr. Dario Scaramuzzi).

The Consortium Partners provided the current status of the project and discussed planned activities related to WP1 (Programme Management), WP2 (Training and capacity development), WP3 (Intervention study implementation and evaluation surveys), WP4 (Acceptability, Feasibility and Economics Studies) and WP5 (Communication and Dissemination).

Given the relevance of the results that INTEGRATION is achieving, at this meeting it was planned to extend the duration of the project to make sure an effectively and rapidly translation of the research outcome into updated policy.