Inside MESA Track
What is MESA Track?
MESA Track is a structured, continuously updated, project-level map of the global malaria research and implementation ecosystem, spanning the continuum from control to elimination and prevention of re-establishment.
It captures who is doing what, where, with whom, and with whose funding, as well as what outputs (published and grey literature) are achieved, and serves as a shared institutional memory for the malaria community. MESA was established in 2011, and MESA Track includes projects from 2012 onwards. It is maintained through active collaboration with researchers, institutions, funders, and national malaria programs worldwide.
Beyond improving visibility, MESA Track is the knowledge base that facilitates informed decision-making across malaria science, funding, and policy. It enables:
- Prioritization and identification of knowledge and funding gaps across the research continuum
- Surfacing of emerging and declining research trends
- Country-driven research prioritization and stewardship of national agendas
- Improved foresight and planning for policy-relevant reviews
- Networking among investigators, research institutions, funding agencies, national malaria programs, policymakers and implementers to avoid duplication and accelerate translation into policy and practice
- Up-to-date discussions across the global malaria community
Information in MESA Track directly feeds into a family of knowledge products that translate the landscape into actionable intelligence:
- Portfolio syntheses — dynamic analyses of country, funder, institutional, investigator and thematic portfolios that show how resources and efforts are distributed across the ecosystem, where they align with endemic-country priorities, and where gaps remain.
- Deep Dives — landscape synthesis of active and completed projects addressing a specific topic, where projects are classified by research area, timeline, and geography. They are updated as new projects are added to MESA Track and they provide near real-time foresight into evidence likely to emerge from active research — something static reviews cannot offer. Learn more about the Deep Dives here.
These products give researchers, funders, policymakers, and national malaria programs a dynamic view of the landscape — not a snapshot, but a continuously evolving picture.
Methodology
MESA Track is maintained through three main channels:
Institutional portfolios
The MESA Team connects with focal points at institutions, or vice-versa, to gather information on malaria projects. Institutions that prefer to manage their own portfolios can directly upload and update their portfolio in the MESA Track database using login credentials provided by the MESA Team (mesa@isglobal.org). The Ifakara Health Institute is an example of an institution that continuously updates its portfolio, providing insights into its research portfolio for the entire malaria community.
Curation of the Deep Dives
Deep Dives enable targeted outreach to institutions, researchers, national malaria programs, implementers, and funders to contribute and ensure their projects are captured in MESA Track.
Add your project
If you are involved in or planning malaria research, adding your project to MESA Track takes minutes, ensures your work is visible and contributes to the portfolio synthesis and Deep Dives that inform decisions across the community.
Add your malaria project or contact the MESA Team via the contact form.
Data protection
The MESA Track database is hosted on a server in Spain and complies with Spanish and EU data protection law. We adhere to the core principles of data processing – fair and transparent.
Information can be removed, or updated at any time upon legitimate request of a partner directly involved in the project.
For queries regarding data protection, please email MESA at mesa@isglobal.org.
