On January 2nd, 2019, 39 graduate students from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Graduate School of Education will board planes and fly off to conduct unique research projects with ministries of health and education across Africa.

As part of its post-Harvard support, the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program offers Program alumni the opportunity to present research proposals that can support the achievement of their legacy goals. The Program matches each proposal to a set of talented Harvard graduate students, and together with support from Professors Rifat Atun and Fernando Reimers, the students are well equipped to conduct rigorous research that can drive policy decisions. 

Since August 2018, four ministries of education and five ministries of health have been working with their respective teams of Harvard graduate students remotely and in January they will work together in-country for approximately three weeks to conduct in-depth field research consisting primarily of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions.

By the conclusion of this research cycle in March 2019, the Program will have supported 55 Harvard graduate students working with six ministries of health and eight ministries of education across 11 African countries since 2017.