Mapping the path to impact
For a decade, health research in Uganda was a fragmented landscape, scattered across hundreds of journals, reports, and archives. At ACRES, we have brought this data into focus through our Evidence Gap Maps. Through this service, we don’t just collect information, but we also visualize it. By showing exactly what we know and, more importantly, what we don’t, we are helping the country move past guesswork and toward strategic action.
The National Health Research Agenda
A map is only useful if it leads somewhere. ACRES led the charge in creating and updating Uganda’s Integrated Ten-Year Health Research Agenda. This is a focused roadmap designed to meet the demands of the National Development Plan III. It provides the scientific backbone that national health plans and funding cycles require to be effective.
The power of this agenda lies in how it synchronizes the needs of different stakeholders into a single, high-functioning system. For the policymaker, it provides a definitive answer to the “What next?” question, ensuring that every legislative move or funding allocation is backed by a decade of consolidated intelligence. It removes the hesitation that comes with uncertainty, allowing leaders to act with the confidence that they are addressing the country’s actual pressure points.
At the same time, the agenda serves as a vital guarantee for funders against the risk of wasted resources. By highlighting exactly where the gaps are, it ensures that every dollar is funnelled into critical areas like infectious diseases, Non-Communicable Diseases, and infrastructure truly matter for Ugandans, rather than being lost to duplicate studies that have already been answered.
Ultimately, this roadmap acts as the unifying force for the knowledge community. Instead of researchers working in silos on separate interests, the agenda aligns these individual efforts toward a shared national goal. It transforms scattered projects into a collective movement for progress, ensuring that the work produced by our scholars and advocates has the maximum possible impact on the nation’s future.
Protecting Uganda’s Resources with Hard Proof
Evidence-informed decision-making is important for the conservation of our forests, wetlands, and natural heritage. When a forest disappears, the cost to Uganda’s future is immense, but stopping that destruction requires undeniable proof more than passion.
ACRES teamed up with Earth & Rights Initiatives (ERI) to build an Evidence Gap Map on Natural Resource Degradation. We consolidated data to give civil society the “evidence-ammo” they need for environmental litigation and high-stakes advocacy.
We brought together the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), legal experts, and ecologists, and we answered a single, urgent question: What are the real developmental impacts of natural resource degradation? In the process we moved environmental protection from an emotional plea to a data-informed demand.
