Networking among young global health researchers through an intensive training approach: a mixed methods exploratory study

Background

Networks are increasingly regarded as essential in health research aimed at influencing practice and policies. Less research has focused on the role networking can play in researchers’ careers and its broader impacts on capacity strengthening in health research. We used the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR) annual Summer Institute for New Global Health Researchers (SIs) as an opportunity to explore networking among new global health researchers.

Methods

A mixed-methods exploratory study was conducted among SI alumni and facilitators who had participated in at least one SI between 2004 and 2010. Alumni and facilitators completed an online short questionnaire, and a subset participated in an in-depth interview. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data was triangulated with quantitative results and CCGHR reports on SIs. Synthesis occurred through the development of a process model relevant to networking through the SIs.

Results

Through networking at the SIs, participants experienced decreased isolation and strengthened working relationships. Participants accessed new knowledge, opportunities, and resources through networking during the SI. Post-SI, participants reported ongoing contact and collaboration, although most participants desired more opportunities for interaction. They made suggestions for structural supports to networking among new global health researchers.

Conclusions

Networking at the SI contributed positively to opportunities for individuals, and contributed to the formation of a network of global health researchers. Intentional inclusion of networking in health research capacity strengthening initiatives, with supportive resources and infrastructure could create dynamic, sustainable networks accessible to global health researchers around the world.     

The research dance: university and community research collaborations at Yarrabah, North Queensland, Australia

This article reflects upon collaborative research relationships between indigenous communities and universities in social health and empowerment programmes. This article is focused on Family Well Being programme and Indigenous Men's Support Groups conducted over the last decade at Yarrabah in northern Queensland. These programmes have incorporated a process whereby the community has set research agendas, local researchers have been employed, and university researchers have facilitated the development of appropriate programmes, the capacity of the community to manage these, and programme evaluation. This article draws upon reflective data derived from intensive group workshops and semistructured, in-depth interviews with both community and university-based researchers conducted in late 2006 and early 2007. These workshops and interviews describe, often in the words of participants, the experiences, challenges and strategies for research collaborations. This article recommends positive strategies for successful partnerships and outlines some challenges faced by both community and university researchers in programmes. The findings of the interviews and workshops are thematically discussed in relation to international literature on collaborative research.     

Broadening participation in community problem solving: A multidisciplinary model to support collaborative practice and research

Over the last 40 years, thousands of communities—in the United States and internationally—have been working to broaden the involvement of people and organizations in addressing community-level problems related to health and other areas. Yet, in spite of, this experience, many communities are having substantial difficulty achieving their collaborative objective, and many funders of community partnerships and participation initiatives are looking for ways to get more out of their investment. One of the reasons we are in this predicament is that the practitioners and researchers who are interested in community collaboration come from a variety of contexts, initiatives, and academic disciplines, and few of them have integrated their work with experiences or literatures beyond their own domain. In this article, we seek to overcome some of this fragmentation of effort by presenting a multidisciplinary model that lays out the pathways by which broadly participatory processes lead to more effective community problem solving and to improvements in community health. The model, which builds on a broad array of practical experience as well as conceptual and empirical work in multiple fields, is an outgrowth of a joint-learning work group that was organized to support nine communities in the Turning Point initiative. Following a detailed explication of the model, the article focuses on the implications of the model for research, practice, and policy. It describes how the model can help researchers answer the fundamental effectiveness and “how-to” questions related to community collaboration. In addition, the article explores differences between the model and current practice, suggesting strategies that can help the participants in, and funders of, community collaborations strengthen their efforts.     

How can PhD research contribute to the global health research agenda?

We propose that PhD and post-doctoral researchers are a strong, untapped resource with the potential to make a real contribution to global health research (GHR). However, we raise some ethical, institutional and funding issues which either discourage new researchers from entering the field or diminish their capacity to contribute. We offer a number of recommendations to Canadian academic and non-academic institutions and funders, and aim to generate discussion among them about how to overcome these constraints. We need changes in the way graduate research is organized and funded, to create opportunities to work collaboratively within established low- and middle-income country (LMIC)/Canadian research partnerships. We urge changes in the way institutions fund, recognize, value and support GHR, so established researchers are encouraged to develop long-term LMIC relationships and mentor new Canadian/LMIC researchers. We ask funders to reconsider additional GHR activities for support, including strategic training initiatives and dissemination of research results. We also encourage the development of alternative institutions that can provide training and mentoring opportunities. GHR per se faces many challenges. If we address those that reduce our potential to contribute, we can become real partners in GHR, working towards equitable global health and solutions to priority health issues.     

Health research systems: promoting health equity or economic competitiveness?

International collaborative health research is justifiably expected to help reduce global health inequities. Investment in health policy and systems research in developing countries is essential to this process but, currently, funding for international research is mainly channelled towards the development of new medical interventions. This imbalance is largely due to research legislation and policies used in high-income countries. These policies have increasingly led these countries to invest in health research aimed at boosting national economic competitiveness rather than reducing health inequities. In the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the regulation of research has encouraged a model that: leads to products that can be commercialized; targets health needs that can be met by profitable, high-technology products; has the licensing of new products as its endpoint; and does not entail significant research capacity strengthening in other countries. Accordingly, investment in international research is directed towards pharmaceutical trials and product development public-private partnerships for neglected diseases. This diverts funding away from research that is needed to implement existing interventions and to strengthen health systems, i.e. health policy and systems research. Governments must restructure their research laws and policies to increase this essential research in developing countries.     

Promoting the social value of research in Kenya: examining the practical aspects of collaborative partnerships using an ethical framework

The ethics of research continue to attract considerable debate, particularly when that research is sponsored by partners from the North and carried out in the South. Ethical research should contribute to social value in the country where research is being carried out, but there is significant debate around how this might be achieved and who is responsible. The literature suggests that researchers might employ two inter-related strategies to maximise social value: collaborative partnerships with policy makers and communities from the outset of research, and dissemination of research results to participants, policy makers and implementers once the research is over. These areas have received relatively little empirical attention. In this study, we carried out 40 in-depth interviews to explore the role of collaborative partnerships in health research priority setting, and the way in which research findings are disseminated to aid policy making and implementation in Kenya. Interviewees included policy makers, researchers, policy implementers and representatives of organisations funding health reforms in Kenya. Two policy issues were drawn upon as tracers wherever possible: (1) the introduction of Artemesinin-based Combination Therapies (ACTs), an anti-malarial treatment policy; and (2) Haemophilus influenzae (Hib) vaccine for the prevention of pneumococcal diseases among children. The findings point to significant gaps in the 'research to policy to practice' pathway, particularly for national research institutions with a focus on clinical/biomedical research. These gaps reflect poorly effective partnerships among stakeholders and limit the potential social value of much research. While more investment is needed to establish strong structures for promoting and directing collaboration and partnership, how to target this investment is not entirely clear, especially in the context of the considerable power of the global health agenda and the research financing tied to it.     

Community of practice: an effective mechanism to strengthen capacity in climate change and health

SettingClimate change is one of the greatest threats to global health in the twenty-first century and has recently been declared a health emergency. The lack of effective dissemination of emerging evidence on climate change health risks, effects, and innovative interventions to health professionals presents one of the greatest challenges to climate action today.InterventionTo identify and address the knowledge gaps at the intersection of health and climate change, the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR) established a Working Group on Climate Change and Health (WGCCH). WGCCH is evolving organically into a community of practice (CoP) that aims to elevate knowledge brokering on climate change and health and expand to global multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary realms.OutcomesTo date, the WGCCH established a regular webinar series to share expert knowledge from around the world on intersections between climate change and health, developed short summaries on climate change impacts on broad health challenges, supported young professional training, and enhanced climate health research capacity and skills through collegial network development and other collaborative projects that emerged from CoP activities.ImplicationsThis paper proposes that WGCCH may serve as an example of an effective strategy to address the lack of opportunities for collaborative engagement and mutual learning between health researchers and practitioners, other disciplines, and the general public. Our experiences and lessons learned provide opportunities to learn from the growing pains and successes of an emerging climate change and health-focused CoP.     

Inter-organizational relationships of health partnerships: characteristics of the Fulton County SPARC Program

Local governments have long used partnerships and collaborations with the nonprofit and private sectors to improve services, support innovation, and save cost. Nowhere is this more evident than in the public health and human services sectors. This case study follows up on an earlier report on the attributes of a collaborative public/private-nonprofit health partnership; Fulton County, Georgia's Sickness Prevention Achieved Through Regional Collaboration program, (SPARC). Fulton County has been able to sustain its SPARC partnership despite the demise of similar efforts within the region. This study examines the characteristics of the Fulton County SPARC partnership that may have contributed to its endurance. A series of interviews and surveys were administered to Fulton County SPARC partners in 2009 and 2011 to capture operational characteristics of the partnership and the degree to which partners interacted among themselves. Results indicate that despite changes thought to strengthen the partnership, the developmental stages of partnerships and collaborations are shown to be non-linear; therefore, movement from one stage to the other is not guaranteed thus warranting leaders' regular attention to both individual and organizational commitment to collaboration dynamics.     

Exploring the promises of intersectionality for advancing women's health research

Women's health research strives to make change. It seeks to produce knowledge that promotes action on the variety of factors that affect women's lives and their health. As part of this general movement, important strides have been made to raise awareness of the health effects of sex and gender. The resultant base of knowledge has been used to inform health research, policy, and practice. Increasingly, however, the need to pay better attention to the inequities among women that are caused by racism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, heterosexism, and able-bodism, is confronting feminist health researchers and activists. Researchers are seeking new conceptual frameworks that can transform the design of research to produce knowledge that captures how systems of discrimination or subordination overlap and "articulate" with one another. An emerging paradigm for women's health research is intersectionality. Intersectionality places an explicit focus on differences among groups and seeks to illuminate various interacting social factors that affect human lives, including social locations, health status, and quality of life. This paper will draw on recently emerging intersectionality research in the Canadian women's health context in order to explore the promises and practical challenges of the processes involved in applying an intersectionality paradigm. We begin with a brief overview of why the need for an intersectionality approach has emerged within the context of women's health research and introduce current thinking about how intersectionality can inform and transform health research more broadly. We then highlight novel Canadian research that is grappling with the challenges in addressing issues of difference and diversity. In the analysis of these examples, we focus on a largely uninvestigated aspect of intersectionality research - the challenges involved in the process of initiating and developing such projects and, in particular, the meaning and significance of social locations for researchers and participants who utilize an intersectionality approach. The examples highlighted in the paper represent important shifts in the health field, demonstrating the potential of intersectionality for examining the social context of women's lives, as well as developing methods which elucidate power, create new knowledge, and have the potential to inform appropriate action to bring about positive social change.     

Turning Point's National Excellence Collaboratives: assessing a new model for policy and system capacity development.

This article reviews the factors leading to successful collaborations and observations about the functioning of groups of states in collaborative coalitions by examining one specific collaboration--the Turning Point initiative. Turning Point is an initiative funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to transform and strengthen the US public health system so that it is more effective, more community based, and more collaborative in protecting and improving the public's health and well-being. A unique aspect of the Turning Point initiative is the creation of 5 National Excellence Collaboratives, with participating members from multiple Turning Point state partnerships, national public health associations, federal agencies, and diverse other organizations appropriate to each Collaborative's focus. Over 5 years, Turning Point Collaboratives developed educational materials, practice tools, and policy recommendations aimed at improving the public health system at the state and local levels and, ultimately, improving the health of the US population. The literature on collaborative partnerships and coalitions describes key elements and factors among successful partnerships. Areas of importance to success in Turning Point Collaboratives that have implications for future efforts include: continuity of leadership and membership, adequate technical assistance, diversity of Collaborative membership, regular feedback, and incentives.     

"Out-of-the-mainstream" youth as partners in collaborative research: exploring the benefits and challenges.

Forming collaborations between university-based researchers and community-based organizations (CBOs) serves to improve health promotion research and service. Unfortunately, members of the targeted populations are typically not included in such collaborations. This article describes the development and maintenance of a successful university-CBO collaboration that was formed to explore HIV-related risk rates and prevention strategies for suburban street youth and discusses the benefits and challenges of including out-of-the-mainstream youth as full collaborative partners in the research. Specific benefits included population-specific modifications of the research methods and instruments, recruitment of hard-to-reach youth, greater ease in tracking participants, and increased project acceptability and credibility. Among the challenges were issues related to boundaries, confidentiality, commitment, and burnout. Although such collaborations require increased time and commitment, the synergistic knowledge and experience of university researchers, community-based service providers, and out-of-the-mainstream youth can result in the development of unique and informative research and service programs.     

Models for community health partnerships

More so than ever, the collaborative efforts of community partnerships are considered a powerful means of improving community health. These partnerships--voluntary collaborations of diverse community organizations--can enhance organizational and personal relationships in the community and thus promote the health of residents. But when major institutions and community leaders join forces, they frequently face problems in organizing their efforts. Some leading cross-sectoral partnerships have made major strides in overcoming these problems and in demonstrating tangible results.     

NIEHS Extramural Global Environmental Health Portfolio: Opportunities for Collaboration.

BACKGROUND: Global environmental health has emerged as a critical topic for environmental health researchers and practitioners. Estimates of the environmental contribution of total worldwide disease burden range from 25 to 33%. OBJECTIVE: We reviewed grants funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) during 2005-2007 to evaluate the costs and scientific composition of the global environmental health portfolio, with the ultimate aim of strengthening global environmental health research partnerships. METHODS/RESULTS: We examined NIEHS grant research databases to identify the global environmental health portfolio. In the past 3 fiscal years (2005-2007), the NIEHS funded 57 scientific research projects in 37 countries, at an estimated cost of $30 million. Metals such as arsenic, methylmercury, and lead are the most frequently studied toxic agents, but a wide range of stressors, routes of exposure, and agents are addressed in the portfolio. CONCLUSIONS: The portfolio analysis indicates that there is a firm foundation of research activities upon which additional global environmental health partnerships could be encouraged. Current data structures could be strengthened to support more automated analysis of grantee information.     

Engaging Local Public Health System Partnerships to Educate the Future Public Health Workforce

The Institute of Medicine concluded that keeping the public healthy required a well-educated public health workforce, thus leading to its recommendation that “all undergraduates should have access to education in public health” [2]. In response to this call, the authors examined the current practice, feasibility, and value in strengthening (or building) a functional collaborative model between academic institutions and practitioners from local health departments to educate tomorrow’s public health workforce. Local and regional health departments in New England were surveyed to: (1) establish a baseline of existing working relationships between them and nearby academic institutions; (2) examine the barriers that inhibit the development of collaborations with academic partners; (3) assess how they jointly promote public health workforce development; and (4) analyze which essential public health services their partnership addresses. Despite the lack of financial resources often cited for the absence of academic-local health department collaborations, some New England states reported that their academic institution and local public health department partnerships were valued and productive. The authors discuss how effective academic-community collaborations have the potential to facilitate a broad-based appreciation of public health among students via a wide array of public health curricula and applied experiential learning opportunities in public health settings. The authors propose a model for how to combine basic public health lessons with practical experience and leadership offered by local health departments, in order to foster a real understanding of public health, its importance, practice, and relevance in today’s society from a public health workforce perspective.     

Challenges to interdisciplinary training for junior space,place and health researchers

The complexity of research questions posed in space, place and health research has led some researchers to suggest that these questions cannot be addressed adequately through a single research discipline. The objective of this article is two-fold. First, we argue that junior researchers face distinct challenges in learning how to conduct interdisciplinary research. Second, we outline how a unique training experience, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Space, Place and Health Summer Institute addressed some of the challenges to incorporating interdisciplinarity into this unique field. Interdisciplinary training can prepare the next generation of researchers in all health fields to work effectively with colleagues from various disciplines, ask novel questions and address complex issues in innovative ways.     

Strategies for setting a national research agenda that is responsive to community needs

Setting a national environmental health research agenda requires broad public input, including that from leading scientists, health care professionals, and communities. Contributions from these diverse constituencies are essential to formulating a research and education strategy that both advances our understanding of the causes and mechanisms of environmentally related diseases and translates such findings into effective prevention and clinical applications to protect those most affected by adverse environmental exposures. Given the increasing number of individual researchers working with communities to address environmental health needs during the past decade, it is also essential for research institutions to foster relationships with communities to understand and respond to their unique public health needs, as well as to communicate research advances in a manner that is both understandable and culturally appropriate. To achieve broad public input and to foster community-university partnerships, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) supports various workshops, roundtables, and advisory groups. In particular, the NIEHS finds Town Meetings to be a successful model for bringing academic researchers together with community residents, state and local departments of health, and community-based organizations to foster greater awareness of community needs, public health needs, and environmental health science research. Since 1998, the NIEHS has supported 16 Town Meetings across the country. In this article we highlight the major outcomes of these meetings to demonstrate the effectiveness of this mechanism for enhancing cooperation among researchers, community residents, and public health officials with the goal of improving public health and setting a national research agenda.     

Indigenous Peoples of North America: Environmental Exposures and Reproductive Justice

Background: Indigenous American communities face disproportionate health burdens and environmental health risks compared with the average North American population. These health impacts are issues of both environmental and reproductive justice.Objectives: In this commentary, we review five indigenous communities in various stages of environmental health research and discuss the intersection of environmental health and reproductive justice issues in these communities as well as the limitations of legal recourse.Discussion: The health disparities impacting life expectancy and reproductive capabilities in indigenous communities are due to a combination of social, economic, and environmental factors. The system of federal environmental and Indian law is insufficient to protect indigenous communities from environmental contamination. Many communities are interested in developing appropriate research partnerships in order to discern the full impact of environmental contamination and prevent further damage.Conclusions: Continued research involving collaborative partnerships among scientific researchers, community members, and health care providers is needed to determine the impacts of this contamination and to develop approaches for remediation and policy interventions.     

Interdisciplinary health research

Health care professionals are increasingly called upon to work collaboratively. This commentary discusses our experience at the Summer Institute on Interdisciplinary Health Research, which aimed to increase the capacity of future Canadian researchers to work with health professionals from other disciplines. We discuss, in particular, our small group experience--the challenges we faced, and how we were able to resolve the internal conflicts that occurred. We also discuss the conditions necessary to engage in interdisciplinary work and offer suggestions to improve future initiatives to build interdisciplinary research capacity.     

Canada and global health research: 2005 update

From a global perspective, large disparities persist between the focus of health research investments and the global burden of illness. Over the past four years, Canadian efforts to address these disparities have steadily increased. The objectives of this paper are to present these recent achievements and to highlight continuing challenges. We summarize the activities of two complementary Canadian initiatives, both aimed at increasing Canada's investment and involvement in global health research. They are the Global Health Research Initiative--a partnership involving four federal agencies; and the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research--a not-for-profit membership organization. Several achievements include: increased investment in global health research; increased knowledge production and use through "South-Canada" partnerships; stronger advocacy and increased awareness; enhanced capacity development; and improved coordination and communication. Based on these achievements, important current and future challenges are identified. They include: more coherent resource allocation; more focussed health research priorities; and the need to maintain and build momentum.