In September 2015, community educators and community advisory board members from the HPTN and MTN clinical research sites and communities in 11 countries gathered in FHI 360's Durham office. They spent a week learning how to enhance their manuscript writing through presentations, workshops, and group projects. At the end of the week, 11 MTN and 18 HPTN participants (with some overlap of both networks) “graduated” as even better manuscript writers and came away with newfound knowledge and professional networks. 

Musonda Simwinga works on the HPTN 071 study in Zambia and said the workshop taught him a lot. “I really learned that we need to tell the community engagement story to the rest of the world,” he said. “And what better place to tell it (through our writing) because we are the frontline people in the community.”