In November 2018, Dr Thuy Ha- VCAPS study manager and PhD candidate Erick Huang represented VCAPS team at the Annual Scientific Meeting of Global Alliance of Chronic Diseases (GACD) in Brazil.

The GACD Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) from 12 – 16 November 2018 is hosted by the Sao Paolo Research Foundation (FAPESP). This is the 7th ASM meeting to date and the 2018 ASM offers three workshops for vibrant researchers including Implementation Science Workshop (12 – 13 November), Scale-up forum and Annual Scientific Meeting (14 – 16 November).

Within 8th GACD Implementation Science Workshop and Scale-up forum, topics including of challenges, methods and strategies of dissemination and implementation are covered. The state of the evidence based, research methods and measures, maximizing the impact on policy and practice are also discussed. The question on who has responsibilities to scale up, whether it is researchers, policy makers, or social civilians is also brought up at the workshop.

GACD puts implementation science at the core of each of its joint calls for applications and expects funded research projects to address implementation challenges in their settings.

Next year, GACD aims to support researches which have high scale-up potential based on scientific evidences, theoretical framework and contextual flexible adoption.