CRHRDC officers and members led by the chairman Chancellor Raymundo Rovillos gave their nods for the implementation of the Philippine National Health Research System Strategy Roadmap 2015-2019. This was learned during the observation of the 9th PNHRS awareness month on August 24, 2015 at the Philippine International Convention Center, Manila.

The roadmap envisions a dynamic and responsive health research community working for the attainment of national and global health needs. To attain this, the PCHRD together with all regional health consortia in the country including the CRHRDC shall pursue interventions in the following strategic objectives:

1. Ensuring good System governance;
2. Creating and sustaining an enabling environment for health research stakeholders;
3. Institutionalizing effective implementation, monitoring and evaluation of research programs, projects and activities;
4. Ensuring responsiveness of research to current and emerging needs;
5. Improving access to and dissemination of updated information;
6. Developing capacities for conducting, managing and utilizing health research;
7. Establishing and maintaining common service facilities for research; and
8. Strengthening resource mobilization for health research and development.

The CRHRDC’s positive response is due to the innovations brought forth by the roadmap roll out to the regions. This includes the availability of a tool to monitor the performance of the System and the regional consortiums as well as the contribution of the region to the System. Other innovations are the twinning strategies where collaboration to undertake health research project can be between and among consortia (not only institution to institution), increasing investments for capacity building (e.g. Newton fund, USAID STRIDE, Oscar Lopez Fund for Climate Change) to increase utilization of the NUHRA/RUHRA, replication of best practice on the establishment of common service for the Tuklas Lunas (drug discovery) program.   All of these are expected to create a research community in the region.

For its part, CRHRDC will strengthen its organizational structure by engaging more stakeholders from the region and the provinces.