Hedquist Aaron, Jones Catherine M, Mijumbi Rhona M, Sobngwi-Tambekou Joëlle, Parkhurst Justin, Wenham Clare
LSE Health, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom.
The Centre for Rapid Evidence Synthesis, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
PLOS Glob Public Health. 2022 Oct 13;2(10):e0001142. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0001142. eCollection 2022.
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.
地区机构在改善非洲的卫生研究方面可能发挥重要作用。本研究分析了非洲以国家为基础的卫生研究区域组织网络,并评估了它们与国家卫生研究绩效指标之间的潜在关系。在对组织及其成员进行编目之后,我们进行了社会网络分析,以确定各国政府通过支持卫生研究系统功能的区域组织建立联系的关键网络属性。这些数据被用来检验一个假设,即通过区域组织与其他行为体有更多联系的国家行为体在各项指标上的卫生研究绩效水平会更高。非洲大陆围绕卫生研究系统问题形成了密集的网络,有21个独特的区域组织。总体而言,卫生研究区域网络具有包容性。没有一个行为体充当枢纽。然而,当按非洲联盟区域对统计数据进行分组时,有影响力的极点出现了,在东非和西非的影响范围最为突出。此外,在将连通性数据与国家卫生研究绩效进行对比分析时,连通性增加与关键卫生研究指标的更高绩效之间没有统计学上的显著关系。非洲卫生研究区域组织加强工作的包容性和密集网络动态为知识传播与合作提供了关键机遇,以提高非洲大陆的研究能力。需要进一步思考评估区域主义作用以及评价区域组织对加强非洲卫生研究系统影响的适当且有意义的方式。