Maintaining international research collaborations in the setting of a pandemic: Approach in Indonesia.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Karyana M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8285756 | biostudies-literature | 2021
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Maintaining international research collaborations in the setting of a pandemic: Approach in Indonesia.
Karyana Muhammad M Kosasih Herman H Neal Aaron T AT Lau Chuen-Yen CY
Journal of global health 20210717
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Project description:Cerebrovascular disease is the second most common cause of cognitive disorders, usually referred to as vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) and makes some contribution to about 70 % of all dementias. Despite its importance, research into VCID has lagged as compared to cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease. There is an increasing appreciation that closing this gap requires large national and international collaborations. This paper highlights 24 notable large-scale national and international efforts to advance research into VCID (MarkVCID, DiverseVCID, DISCOVERY, COMPASS-ND, HBC, RHU SHIVA, UK DRI Vascular Theme, STROKOG, Meta VCI Map, ISGC, ENIGMA-Stroke Recovery, CHARGE, SVDs@target, BRIDGET, CADASIL Consortium, CADREA, AusCADASIL, DPUK, DPAU, STRIVE, HARNESS, FINESSE, VICCCS, VCD-CRE Delphi). These collaborations aim to investigate the effects on cognition from cerebrovascular disease or impaired cerebral blood flow, the mechanisms of action, means of prevention and avenues for treatment. Consensus groups have been developed to harmonise global approaches to VCID, standardise terminology and inform management and treatment, and data sharing is becoming the norm. VCID research is increasingly a global collaborative enterprise which bodes well for rapid advances in this field.
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Project description:BackgroundThe SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has catalysed a widespread humanitarian crisis in many low- and middle-income countries around the world, with many African nations significantly impacted. The aim of this study was to quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the planning and provision of international reconstructive collaborations in Africa.MethodsAn anonymous, 14-question, multiple choice questionnaire was sent to 27 non-governmental organisations who regularly perform reconstructive surgery in Africa. The survey was open to responses for four weeks, closing on the 7th of March 2021. A single reminder was sent out at 2 weeks. The survey covered four key domains: (1) NGO demographics; (2) the impact of COVID-19 on patient follow-up; (3) barriers to the safe provision of international surgical collaborations during COVID-19; (4) the impact of COVID-19 on NGO funding.ResultsA total of ten reconstructive NGOs completed the survey (response rate, 37%). Ethiopia (n = 5) and Tanzania (n = 4) were the countries where most collaborations took place. Plastic, reconstructive and burns surgery was the most common sub-speciality (n = 7). For NGOs that did not have a year-round presence in country (n = 8), only one NGO was able to perform reconstructive surgery in Africa during the pandemic. The most common barrier identified was travel restrictions (within country, n = 8 or country entry-exit, n = 7). Pre-pandemic, 1547 to ≥ 1800 patients received reconstructive surgery on international surgical collaborations. After the outbreak, 70% of NGOs surveyed had treated no patients, with approximately 1405 to ≥ 1640 patients left untreated over the last year.ConclusionsThe COVID-19 pandemic has placed huge pressures on health services and their delivery across the globe. This theme has extended into international surgical collaborations leading to increased unmet surgical needs in low- and middle-income countries.Level of evidence: Not gradable.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00238-021-01892-4.
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Project description:BackgroundIn this priority-setting exercise, we sought to identify leading research priorities needed for strengthening future pandemic preparedness and response across countries.MethodsThe International Society of Global Health (ISoGH) used the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) method to identify research priorities for future pandemic preparedness. Eighty experts in global health, translational and clinical research identified 163 research ideas, of which 42 experts then scored based on five pre-defined criteria. We calculated intermediate criterion-specific scores and overall research priority scores from the mean of individual scores for each research idea. We used a bootstrap (n = 1000) to compute the 95% confidence intervals.ResultsKey priorities included strengthening health systems, rapid vaccine and treatment production, improving international cooperation, and enhancing surveillance efficiency. Other priorities included learning from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, managing supply chains, identifying planning gaps, and promoting equitable interventions. We compared this CHNRI-based outcome with the 14 research priorities generated and ranked by ChatGPT, encountering both striking similarities and clear differences.ConclusionsPriority setting processes based on human crowdsourcing - such as the CHNRI method - and the output provided by ChatGPT are both valuable, as they complement and strengthen each other. The priorities identified by ChatGPT were more grounded in theory, while those identified by CHNRI were guided by recent practical experiences. Addressing these priorities, along with improvements in health planning, equitable community-based interventions, and the capacity of primary health care, is vital for better pandemic preparedness and response in many settings.
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Project description:Introduction and methodAfrica is currently host to a number of international genomics research and biobanking consortia, each with a mandate to advance genomics research and biobanking in Africa. Whilst most of these consortia promise to transform the way international health research is done in Africa, few have articulated exactly how they propose to go about this. In this paper, we report on a qualitative interviewing study in which we involved 17 genomics researchers in Africa. We describe their perceptions and expectations of international genomics research and biobanking initiatives in Africa.ResultsAll interviewees were of the view that externally funded genomics research and biobanking initiatives in Africa, have played a critical role in building capacity for genomics research and biobanking in Africa and in providing an opportunity for researchers in Africa to collaborate and network with other researchers. Whilst the opportunity to collaborate was seen as a benefit, some interviewees stressed the importance of recognizing that these collaborations carry mutual benefits for all partners, including their collaborators in HICs. They also voiced two major concerns of being part of these collaborative initiatives: the possibility of exploitation of African researchers and the non-sustainability of research capacity building efforts. As a way of minimising exploitation, researchers in Africa recommended that genuine efforts be made to create transparent and equitable international health research partnerships. They suggested that this could be achieved through,: having rules of engagement, enabling African researchers to contribute to the design and conduct of international health projects in Africa, and mutual and respectful exchange of experience and capacity between research collaborators. These were identified as hallmarks to equitable international health research collaborations in Africa.ConclusionGenomics research and biobanking initiatives in Africa such as H3Africa have gone some way in defining aspects of fair and equitable research collaborations in Africa. However, they will need to strive at achieving equitable health research collaborations if they truly aim at setting a gold standard for how international health research should be conducted in Africa.
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Project description:BackgroundProgress in palliative care (PC) requires scientific advances which could potentially be catalyzed by international research collaboration (IRC). It is currently not known how often IRC occurs with PC investigators in South America.ObjectivesTo evaluate the percentage of South America journal articles on PC involving IRCs and the impact of these collaborations on the scientific potential the studies and on their citations.MethodsThis was a bibliometric analysis of studies published between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2017. A search of Pubmed, Embase, Lilacs, and Web of Science (WOS) was performed using the terms "palliative care," "hospice care," "hospices" and "terminal care," combined with the name of South America countries. The scientific potential was assessed by analyzing study design, characteristics of the journal and funding. IRCs were further subdivided in internal (within South America countries) and external (with countries outside South America).FindingsOf the 641 articles, 117 (18.2%) involved IRCs (internal: 18, 2.8%; external: 110, 17.2%). Articles with IRCs had higher median two-year citations in WOS (2 vs. 1, p < 0.001), Scopus (3 vs. 1, p < 0.001) and Google Scholar (4.5 vs. 2, p < 0.001) compared to articles without IRC. Moreover, they were more often funded (40.7% vs. 9.7%, p < 0.001), published in Pubmed-indexed (76.1% vs. 41.6%; p < 0.001) and in WOS-indexed (70.1% vs. 29.6%; p < 0.001) journals, and with study designs most often classified as clinical trial (5.1% vs. 1.0%; p = 0.002) and cohort (10.3% vs. 2.9%; p < 0.001) compared to articles without IRC.ConclusionsStudies with international research collaborations, both internal and external to South America, are more frequently cited and have characteristics with greater scientific potential than do studies without international collaborations.
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Project description:Scientometrics enables scholars to assess and visualize emerging research trends and hot-spots in the scientific literature from a quantitative standpoint. In the last decades, Africa has nearly doubled its absolute count of scholarly output, even though its share in global knowledge production has dramatically decreased. The still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the way scholarly research is conducted, published, and disseminated. However, the COVID-19-related research focus, the scientific productivity, and the research collaborative network of African researchers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic remain to be elucidated. This study aimed to clarify the COVID-19 research patterns among African researchers and estimate the strength of collaborations and partnerships between African researchers and scholars from the rest of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, collecting data from electronic scholarly databases such as Web of Science (WoS), PubMed/MEDLINE and African Journals OnLine (AJOL), the largest and prominent platform of African-published scholarly journals. We found that COVID-19-related collaboration patterns varied among African regions. For instance, most of the scholarly partnerships occurred with formerly colonial countries (such as European or North-American countries). In other cases, scholarly ties of North African countries were above all with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In terms of number of publications, South Africa and Egypt were among the most productive countries. Bibliometrics and, in particular, scientometrics can help scholars identify research areas of particular interest, as well as emerging topics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. With a specific focus on the still-ongoing viral outbreak, they can assist decision- and policy-makers in allocating funding and economic-financial, logistic, organizational, and human resources, based on the specific gaps and needs of a given country or research area.
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Project description:The Open Science Prize was established with the following objectives: first, to encourage the crowdsourcing of open data to make breakthroughs that are of biomedical significance; second, to illustrate that funders can indeed work together when scientific interests are aligned; and finally, to encourage international collaboration between investigators with the intent of achieving important innovations that would not be possible otherwise. The process for running the competition and the successes and challenges that arose are presented.
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Project description:Background:?Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) sampling at the time of acute HIV infection (AHI) is crucial in understanding NeuroAIDS pathogenesis. Here, we report on the safety of performing a lumbar puncture (LP) during untreated AHI and follow-up after initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART). Methods:?We reviewed clinical records of participants who took part in an AHI protocol in Bangkok, Thailand, including untreated AHI subjects (baseline), and longitudinal visits following immediate initiation of cART to assess rates and risk of post-lumbar puncture headaches (PLPH). A cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume of 10-20 mL was collected using standard cutting-edge or atraumatic needles. Results:?From April 2009 to February 2016, 195 LPs were performed, of which 89 (46%) were at baseline. The LP procedures at baseline were not associated with an additional PLPH risk as compared to repeat LPs after cART initiation (26/89 [29%] vs 4/27 [15%], respectively; P=0.134). Higher body mass index (BMI) at baseline (P=0.070) and use of an atraumatic needle (P=0.058) had trend-level associations with reduced PLPH. A higher CSF volume collection (20 mL) was independently associated with a lower PLPH frequency (P=0.024). This association was similar in a subgroup analysis with the use of atraumatic needles. The CD4+ T lymphocyte count, blood and CSF HIV viral load, Fiebig staging, and the presence of an acute retroviral syndrome did not correlate with risk for PLPH (all P>0.05). Conclusion:?The frequency of PLPH during AHI was similar to that seen in the setting of cART-treated HIV infection and not higher with a larger CSF volume collection. Our study adds to the existing evidence that atraumatic needles should be used to minimise the risk of PLPH.
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