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Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis

Regional bodies can potentially play an important role in improving health research in Africa. This study analyses the network of African state-based regional organisations for health research and assesses their potential relationship with national health research performance metrics. After catalogu...

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Autores principales: Hedquist, Aaron, Jones, Catherine M., Mijumbi, Rhona M., Sobngwi-Tambekou, Joëlle, Parkhurst, Justin, Wenham, Clare
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10022136/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36962649
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001142
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author Hedquist, Aaron
Jones, Catherine M.
Mijumbi, Rhona M.
Sobngwi-Tambekou, Joëlle
Parkhurst, Justin
Wenham, Clare
author_facet Hedquist, Aaron
Jones, Catherine M.
Mijumbi, Rhona M.
Sobngwi-Tambekou, Joëlle
Parkhurst, Justin
Wenham, Clare
author_sort Hedquist, Aaron
collection PubMed
description Regional bodies can potentially play an important role in improving health research in Africa. This study analyses the network of African state-based regional organisations for health research and assesses their potential relationship with national health research performance metrics. After cataloguing organisations and their membership, we conducted a social network analysis to determine key network attributes of national governments’ connections via regional organisations supporting functions of health research systems. This data was used to test the hypothesis that state actors with more connections to other actors via regional organisations would have higher levels of health research performance across indicators. With 21 unique regional organisations, the African continent is densely networked around health research systems issues. In general, the regional network for health research is inclusive. No single actor serves as a nexus. However, when statistics are grouped by African Union regions, influential poles emerge, with the most predominate spheres of influence in Eastern and Western Africa. Further, when connectivity data was analysed against national health research performance, there were no statistically significant relationships between increased connectivity and higher performance of key health research metrics. The inclusive and dense network dynamics of African regional organisations for health research strengthening present key opportunities for knowledge diffusion and cooperation to improve research capacity on the continent. Further reflection is needed on appropriate and meaningful ways to assess the role of regionalism and evaluate the influence of regional organisations in strengthening health research systems in Africa.
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spelling pubmed-100221362023-03-17 Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis Hedquist, Aaron Jones, Catherine M. Mijumbi, Rhona M. Sobngwi-Tambekou, Joëlle Parkhurst, Justin Wenham, Clare PLOS Glob Public Health Research Article Regional bodies can potentially play an important role in improving health research in Africa. This study analyses the network of African state-based regional organisations for health research and assesses their potential relationship with national health research performance metrics. After cataloguing organisations and their membership, we conducted a social network analysis to determine key network attributes of national governments’ connections via regional organisations supporting functions of health research systems. This data was used to test the hypothesis that state actors with more connections to other actors via regional organisations would have higher levels of health research performance across indicators. With 21 unique regional organisations, the African continent is densely networked around health research systems issues. In general, the regional network for health research is inclusive. No single actor serves as a nexus. However, when statistics are grouped by African Union regions, influential poles emerge, with the most predominate spheres of influence in Eastern and Western Africa. Further, when connectivity data was analysed against national health research performance, there were no statistically significant relationships between increased connectivity and higher performance of key health research metrics. The inclusive and dense network dynamics of African regional organisations for health research strengthening present key opportunities for knowledge diffusion and cooperation to improve research capacity on the continent. Further reflection is needed on appropriate and meaningful ways to assess the role of regionalism and evaluate the influence of regional organisations in strengthening health research systems in Africa. Public Library of Science 2022-10-13 /pmc/articles/PMC10022136/ /pubmed/36962649 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001142 Text en © 2022 Hedquist et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hedquist, Aaron
Jones, Catherine M.
Mijumbi, Rhona M.
Sobngwi-Tambekou, Joëlle
Parkhurst, Justin
Wenham, Clare
Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis
title Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis
title_full Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis
title_fullStr Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis
title_full_unstemmed Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis
title_short Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis
title_sort mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in africa: a social network analysis
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10022136/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36962649
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001142
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