Assessing Global Health Communities of Practice: Application of a Conceptual Framework to An Experience in Africa
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Abstract
Work in Progress
Background
Communities of Practice (CoPs) are growing both in number and in activities in Global Health. They are increasingly seen as a useful strategy to achieve better knowledge management in the field of health policy.
Global Health Policy (GHP) CoPs have several specific traits. First, they include actors across professional groups, academic disciplines, niches of knowledge, countries and organizations. Secondly, knowledge in health policy is typically context-specific as decisions on policies and on their implementation are not only based on technical issues, but also on political considerations. Finally, GHP CoPs are, by definition, widely geographically distributed. For this reason, they take the form, at least to some extent, of virtual CoPs, taking advantage of ICT, and social medias in particular. Given these characteristics, GHP CoPs face specific challenges that influence their success and impact.
There is an increasing need to document progress and evaluate effectiveness of GHP CoPs.
Objective
This paper represents a first step in the evaluation agenda. It aims to provide and test a conceptual framework for the analysis of GHP CoPs and for the assessment of the determinants of their performance.
Methods
The framework builds both on an extensive review of the existing literature on knowledge management within and outside the health sector and on the experience of the authors as facilitators of GHP CoPs in Africa.
The framework reflects the specific characteristics, challenges and needs of CoPs in GHP. The framework organizes the key elements of GHP CoPs into a logical flow that links the resources available and the capacity to mobilize them, to the knowledge management activities and the subsequent expansion of knowledge, to the changes in policy and practice and, ultimately, to health outcomes. It aims at enough versatility to addresses the evaluation needs of the different possible stakeholders of the CoP.
As a test, we apply the framework to the case of one GHP CoP affiliated to Harmonization for Health in Africa (www.hha-online.org), an umbrella partnership gathering major aid actors in the health sector.
Findings: work in progress
The conceptual framework will be submitted to a peer reviewed journal within the next 15 days. We are about to develop an empirical application of the framework to at least 1 GHP CoP (check our blog, one of our platforms: http://www.healthfinancingafrica.org/). We will use an online survey platform to collect information from the CoP members. We will also analyze data shared on the e-discussion group since the launch of the CoP.
Conclusions
The social media revolution will dramatically transform relationships between knowledge holders in Global Health. Our extensive literature review indicated us that there is currently no versatile framework to assess GHP CoP. We expect our research to be a key contribution for groups supporting (e.g. Rockefeller Foundation) or facilitating distributed online CoPs. It will help facilitators to clarify their needs in terms of data and statistics required for assessing the performance of their CoPs and for understanding the nature of the interactions taking place in their CoPs. This should contribute to improvement of the existing ICT platforms.
Background
Communities of Practice (CoPs) are growing both in number and in activities in Global Health. They are increasingly seen as a useful strategy to achieve better knowledge management in the field of health policy.
Global Health Policy (GHP) CoPs have several specific traits. First, they include actors across professional groups, academic disciplines, niches of knowledge, countries and organizations. Secondly, knowledge in health policy is typically context-specific as decisions on policies and on their implementation are not only based on technical issues, but also on political considerations. Finally, GHP CoPs are, by definition, widely geographically distributed. For this reason, they take the form, at least to some extent, of virtual CoPs, taking advantage of ICT, and social medias in particular. Given these characteristics, GHP CoPs face specific challenges that influence their success and impact.
There is an increasing need to document progress and evaluate effectiveness of GHP CoPs.
Objective
This paper represents a first step in the evaluation agenda. It aims to provide and test a conceptual framework for the analysis of GHP CoPs and for the assessment of the determinants of their performance.
Methods
The framework builds both on an extensive review of the existing literature on knowledge management within and outside the health sector and on the experience of the authors as facilitators of GHP CoPs in Africa.
The framework reflects the specific characteristics, challenges and needs of CoPs in GHP. The framework organizes the key elements of GHP CoPs into a logical flow that links the resources available and the capacity to mobilize them, to the knowledge management activities and the subsequent expansion of knowledge, to the changes in policy and practice and, ultimately, to health outcomes. It aims at enough versatility to addresses the evaluation needs of the different possible stakeholders of the CoP.
As a test, we apply the framework to the case of one GHP CoP affiliated to Harmonization for Health in Africa (www.hha-online.org), an umbrella partnership gathering major aid actors in the health sector.
Findings: work in progress
The conceptual framework will be submitted to a peer reviewed journal within the next 15 days. We are about to develop an empirical application of the framework to at least 1 GHP CoP (check our blog, one of our platforms: http://www.healthfinancingafrica.org/). We will use an online survey platform to collect information from the CoP members. We will also analyze data shared on the e-discussion group since the launch of the CoP.
Conclusions
The social media revolution will dramatically transform relationships between knowledge holders in Global Health. Our extensive literature review indicated us that there is currently no versatile framework to assess GHP CoP. We expect our research to be a key contribution for groups supporting (e.g. Rockefeller Foundation) or facilitating distributed online CoPs. It will help facilitators to clarify their needs in terms of data and statistics required for assessing the performance of their CoPs and for understanding the nature of the interactions taking place in their CoPs. This should contribute to improvement of the existing ICT platforms.
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