








New directions in building a scientific social network:
Experiences in the Supercourse project and application to Central Asia


New directions in building a scientific social network:


Experiences in the Supercourse project and application to
Central Asia

Meredith Hennon1, Ronald E. LaPorte1,
Eugene Shubnikov2, Faina
Linkov3


1Department of Epidemiology, University of
Pittsburgh; 2Institute of Internal Medicine,
Novosibirsk, Russia; 3Department of Medicine,
University of Pittsburgh



Abstract

Introduction: Networking leaders in the field of public health and
medicine is very important for improving health locally and globally,
especially in times of disaster.

Methods: Fishing can best be defined as using an internet search engine
to find the name and email address of the person or organization that
is being sought.

Results: With over 500 hours of work, the group compiled a list of
nearly 2,000 email addresses of Ministers of Health, deans of the 1,800
medical schools and schools of public health, and heads of medical and
public health societies.



Keywords: social
networking; public health; health societies



Introduction



Social networking is becoming more and more important in various areas
of science (Tuire, 2001). Despite this fact, there is little known
about the “science of social networking.” In this research project, we
have begun to evaluate the science of social networking with approaches
that heretofore have not been explored. The Social Networking
evaluation has been established as part of the Supercourse. LaPorte
(2004) detailed both the high-tech and low-tech methods of building the
Supercourse faculty network from word of mouth (low-tech) to weekly
updates alerting users of new additions (high-tech). The
interconnectivity of users and knowledge in different arenas makes it
possible for experts to quickly distribute information in a time of
need or emergency. Here we describe an approach to build networks in
the area of global health.



The Supercourse is an online repository of public health
resources designed to empower teachers, accessible by anyone with an
Internet connection and a desire to know more about a certain topic (http://www.pitt.edu/~super1).
The resources are PowerPoint lecture slides on topics ranging from
basic
methods of epidemiology to lectures on specific diseases, as well as
lectures relating to disasters (e.g. earthquakes, tornadoes) that can
be brought
to global attention an instant after such an event occurs. Nearly 5,200
lectures are being shared by over
48,000 faculty members in 174 countries around the world with thirty
one
languages represented in the Supercourse (Supercourse 2010).



Utilizing the “Golden Lecture of Prevention” (Supercourse 2009),
faculty can
introduce
basic knowledge of the importance of prevention and what it means for
the
betterment of global health. This PowerPoint lecture was initially
developed in
2003 and has slides developed by many different collaborators. It has
been
translated into 18 different languages by volunteers associated with
the
Supercourse. The lecture has been viewed thousands of times and
accessed from
140 different countries. This is a good example of networking at the
global
level and how global competence in this area can increase as anyone
with access
to the internet or the Supercourse on CD can view this lecture.



As of June 2010, there are no complete listings of deans of medical
schools
and schools of public health worldwide, nor is there one for the
Ministers
of Health of each country readily available. The World Health
Organization
(WHO) is interested in working through the Supercourse team and the
Library of
Alexandria to compile these lists so as to be able to reach the deans
and ministers for collaboration in the fields of public health
education.
It is with the potential for building networked collaboration and
exchange of
ideas
and knowledge that this “fishing” expedition began.



One of
the most difficult problems in global health is how best to disseminate
global
health knowledge, especially through global health leaders. We decided
to
create a network of deans and Ministers of Health to serve as a gateway
for the
sharing of information with the faculty in the schools and the staff in
the
ministries of health. In addition, we took it upon ourselves to network
the
national directors of medical and public health societies so that we
can reach
through them as gatekeepers to their members. In addition to developing
a
network of deans, ministers, and heads of medical and public health
societies,
this model for network building is especially applicable to the five
countries
of Central Asia. Collaboration, scientific social networks, and
scientific
connectivity are low between researchers at different universities
within each
country as well as between the five individual countries. Utilization
of the
networking building process described hereafter can open scientific and
collaborative doors in the countries of Central Asia that have not been
previously accessible.



Background



The lack of relevant scientific
literature on building social networks, scientific networks, or
scientific
collaborations indicates that novel ideas are needed to build a network
of the
most knowledgeable and influential people in the medical and public
health
world. We describe a novel approach used by our group to achieve an
important
public health goal of scientific networking and encouraging
collaboration
amongst deans of medical schools, ministers of health, and other
influential
people in the world of medicine and public health. Moreover, the
ultimate goal
of building the network is to be able to better share information with
WHO,
other agencies, and ultimately all public health and medical faculty
and
students worldwide.



Newman (2001) found that a
social network is a collection of people, each of whom is acquainted
with some
subset of the others. In the medical and scientific communities, not
every
member knows every other member – the large number of network members
makes it
impossible. However, according to Newman, each member knows a subset of
others
within the group. Thus, a scientific social network could be built by
bringing
together small groups so that it could be possible to interact, at
least
casually, with every other member of the network. By reaching leaders
in the
field of medicine and public health, such as deans, the chances of
reaching
multiple members of medical social networks are greatly increased, as
these
leaders are well connected in their respective areas.



A search for literature
indicates that manuscripts addressing the accessibility of email
addresses and
contact information for these “powerbrokers” in the fields of medicine
and
public health are not currently available, as it has not been a focus
of
previous research studies. Lawrence and Giles (1999) found in a now
outdated
article discussing accessibility of information on the web that only 9%
of the
information on the internet is related to science, education, or
health. This
indicates that fishing for contacts is more likely to be found on less
than
reputable (i.e. non-academic or organization) websites.



Today,
most medical schools of the world have either websites or contact
information
for the school or its dean listed on the Internet. WHO has a complete
list of
world’s medical schools at 
http://www.who.int/hrh/wdms/en/, however email information is
missing from that list. Availability
of
this information suggests that the first step in creating a social
network of
medical and public health leaders would be finding or “fishing” for
their emails,
so that in the future they could be contacted and networked for various
projects.



The
process of fishing for e-mails is not complicated, but it is an
important
activity, as there are no lists of contacts for deans, ministers of
health, or
heads of medical societies. Although there are articles on searching
for
information, we could find no information about how best to find high
level
medical personnel worldwide. Without
careful planning and teamwork, it can turn into quite a time-consuming
task. With
the appropriate planning and delegation of tasks, it yields great
results – a
further connected and more collaborative world. Fishing for contacts
and any
subsequent networks that are built and contacted from these efforts
hold the
potential to expand the Supercourse lectures exponentially. Moreover,
what we
are developing is a model for other disciplines such as agriculture,
business,
or any area of science. Recruitment of new members means more
scientific and
public health knowledge being shared which can lead to more and better
information dissemination in emergencies (e.g. natural disasters or
epidemics)
as well as more specialized topics being shared amongst Supercourse
users.



Methods



Finding
fishers



The
first step in fishing is deciding upon who or what one wishes to find.
Over the
course of a year, our group, consisting of students and faculty members
identified through the Supercourse network, “fished” (searched) for
email
addresses of the deans of all the medical schools in the world, as well
as the deans
of schools of public health, all heads of medical and public health
societies
in the world, and Ministers of Health for all countries. These groups
were
selected for networking, as they have high relevance to the field of
public
health, and potentially have the power to make a difference in public
health
education. Students, staff, and faculty involved in this project were
all motivated
by an interest in global health and teamwork. The group was comprised
of
individuals from a variety of countries including the United States,
United
Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Japan.



Effective
distribution of work



Upon
deciding who or what it is that one wishes to find by fishing, the work
must be
split evenly amongst those who are participating. A typical line of
division is
to split the world up by countries into ten groups. Each group has
approximately 20 countries for which information needs to be located.
This
method varies in dividing the work evenly depending on what information
is
being sought. If one is searching for deans, groups containing China,
India, or
the United States will have hundreds more contacts or addresses to be
located
than a group containing Zambia, Uruguay, and Iceland which only have
one
medical school each. However, fishing for Ministers of Health or
Medical and
Public Health societies is a limited burden. There is usually only one
per
country, so fishing for these contacts should be relatively easy. In
our study,
the task of fishing was split among approximately 10 volunteers, each
assigned
approximately 10 countries.



Development
of a search



It
is
important to take no more than 10 to 15 minutes per search, mostly
focusing on
“.edu” or similar educational or governmental web domains. The idea is
that if
the information cannot be located within this timeframe, it likely does
not
exist or, at the very least, it is not worth finding when one is
searching for
a large quantity of deans or ministers. Also, as this is a large task,
if one
takes too much time searching for one name, the task will be impossible
to
complete. The time spent looking for upwards of 200 names or email
addresses
already guarantees, at the very least, a couple hours of work for each
fisherman. It can also mean up to as much as 50 hours to search and
find
information for those 200 names. University pages that are not in the
English
language can be translated using the Google Translate feature. While
this does
not provide a flawless translation, the fisherman is able to get the
general
idea of what the page says.



Building
the database



The list of medical schools was obtained from the WHO
website 
http://www.who.int/hrh/wdms/en/.
Information related to medical and public health societies, as well as
Ministries of Health, was located by
searching for
the type of organization (society, ministry, etc.) and the name of the
country. Volunteers
were instructed to
locate the contact’s name and email address, as well as position,
organization,
and country, when available. Physical
address and telephone number play a larger role when attempting to send
a
package containing a Supercourse CD/DVD to the contacts. For our
initial purposes, that information
was accepted, but not absolutely necessary. Fishing methods utilized in
this project are outlined in Figure 1.







Results



Fishing for the deans or heads of all medical schools and schools of
public health worldwide was the first collaborative fishing expedition.
Splitting the countries into 10 even groups would yield approximately
180 schools for each fisher to search. However, as indicated
previously, not all countries have an equal number of schools. There is
a higher concentration of medical schools and schools of public health
in countries with larger populations – where the demand for these types
of institutions would be higher. Approximately 180 searches per
individual can equate to upwards of 30-45 hours of work if the maximum
“acceptable” time (10-15 minutes per single search) is spent searching
for each school and head of school (dean or most senior faculty
member). This is indicative of how large of an undertaking the
identification of the head of each of these medical schools and schools
of public health is – a potential 450 hours spent building a scientific
social network of the most senior members of the worldwide scientific
faculty. The 10 people working to locate this elite group of
individuals found 1566 email addresses for medical school and school of
public health deans; about 87% of them were identified (Table 1).




Medical and Public Health societies are membership organizations that
have been established with the goals of treatment and prevention of
diseases. These societies have a variety of mission statements,
priorities, and goals. They offer membership to individuals who meet
their specific qualifications and wish to work towards achieving their
goals and priorities. Reaching the heads of these organizations would
be very beneficial in spreading the Supercourse message of prevention
and preparedness. It is difficult to estimate the number of members in
these 156 different societies worldwide. With the American Medical
Association, its state affiliates, and the American Public Health
Association having approximately 250,000-300,000 members, it’s
indicative that worldwide membership in these societies is well into
the millions (APHA 2010, Peck, 2007). Approximately 113 email addresses
for heads of the various societies were identified which was almost
three quarters of the leaders (Table 1).




The last of our group fishing projects was identifying the Ministers of
Health for all countries of the world. These government officials are
usually the top officials responsible for protecting the health of the
citizens of their respective countries as well as promoting public
health practices. Through internet searches 137 Ministries of Health
were identified (55 countries did not have Ministries of Health or
information regarding them or were not found in the allotted amount of
search time). A notable 125 email addresses for Ministers of Health
were found (Table 1).



Table 1: Results of Fishing

		Total number identified	Total number located through "fishing"	Percentage located
	Medical school & School of Public Health deans
(worldwide)	1804	1566	86.8%
	Medical & Public Health Societies (worldwide)	156	113	72.4%
	Ministers of Health(worldwide)	137	125	91.2%






Discussion



Now that nearly 2,000 email addresses of top ranking medical and public
health officials from around the world have been compiled, what is the
next step? With most public health and medical professionals having
regular access to email and Internet, the first step of scientific
network development would be to make sure that all these professionals
are aware of the Supercourse and its mission and goals. The Supercourse
is constantly seeking ways to initiate collaborative activities at the
global level to promote the health of populations worldwide. The
Supercourse has many things to offer including up-to-date educational
resources to empower educators and clinicians. Evidence-based practice
in prevention and health promotion means reaching out to stakeholders
who can help in distributing these resources to key informants in their
communities. Many medical schools do not have much, if any, public
health coursework included in the curriculum, so a CD/DVD with
Supercourse lectures presented at the time of matriculation – perhaps
included with orientation materials – could be a student’s first
introduction to public health and prevention.




Those who are in the high ranking medical and public health positions
are likely to be passionate about treatment and prevention of different
diseases and conditions. It is this passion for global health that
indicates that building this scientific social network can be very
successful even if there is only an initial response of 40-50% of
deans, medical and public health society heads, and ministers of
health. Worldwide, there are already many collaborative teams or groups
working on various projects. If only one member of such a collaboration
responds to an inquiry and recruits his or her colleagues, this
scientific social network can grow exponentially. By reaching the
deans, ministers, and heads and getting them interested in the project,
they can act as gatekeepers to additional faculty, staff, students, and
others. With WHO providing bulletin information for the Supercourse to
feed to the schools, societies, and ministries of health, this will
open the gatekeepers to being more receptive to the project.




These lists of deans, ministers, and public health leaders have been
developed with the agenda of creating awareness and networking with
other medical and public health professionals. To our knowledge, very
little standardized global health information is shared among those in
the medical field, those involved in public health, and ministers of
health. This would be the first attempt for an international global
network of information sharing. Privacy of these lists is very
important for keeping the network intact, as global health leaders
would not be happy about getting multiple poorly focused messages. No
one is required to remain on the list and can request to be removed if
they do not care to participate.




A foreseeable problem with fishing for Ministers of Health is a term
limit. Many ministers, if not all, are only in their position for a
fixed number of years, with rapid turnaround in politically unstable
countries. These limits may not be the same for every country and the
ministers likely did not enter their position at the same time. This
means there will forever be turnover. This problem can also extend to
medical and public health society heads, as well as deans of medical
schools and schools of public health. No one is guaranteed a position
forever. In order to keep current on who is in charge, additional
fishing will need to be done on a regular basis (preferably once per
year) to determine who is no longer a dean, head, or minister, and then
remove those no longer in their leadership positions from the list and
add the contact details for their replacements. We will also want to
find a person within the Ministries of Health with a more stable
position. It has been suggested by the head of training in Afghanistan
that the heads of training in the Ministries of Health may be ideal as
they are in contact with all of the educators in countries, and they
are in their position for years. Another group to potentially target is
the heads of non-communicable diseases at the Universities as these
people are being mobilized now through WHO; one of the major efforts of
the Supercourse is the prevention of Non-communicable diseases.




This model of information retrieval can be used to build networks of
professionals in areas where little networking is available. Fishermen
at the Library of Alexandria had an intensive course on the ‘art’ of
fishing in 2009 and have begun compiling a list of schools of
agriculture, along with the listing of deans of these schools. This
approach to building a network can be taken by anyone and can be built
for any discipline of science (e.g. physics, engineering, psychology,
nursing, etc.).




Fishing for deans and contact information is a relatively easy and
straight forward first step of building a new, collaborative scientific
social network made up of individuals from all over the world. A little
planning, as well as facilitators to distribute countries, schools, or
organizations evenly amongst fisherman, is needed to ensure that the
end product is delivered in a timely manner and no one person is left
with an unmanageable amount of work to do. Many academic individuals
involved with medicine and public health are interested in building
collaborative relationships. With the introduction of this scientific
social network, they will be able to view lectures on a variety of
topics and contact the authors with new ideas or submit lectures on
topics that may or may not already be available through the
Supercourse. There is likely much unshared knowledge in medicine and
public health worldwide waiting to be introduced to an audience eager
to learn more. The Supercourse has the materials to share this
information with those who wish to learn.




While this article has only touched upon the first step of building a
scientific social network – the creation of a database – it is
important to note that there are further activities to follow this
step. Development of a newsletter, meeting other members face to face,
collaborations, and sharing content are all subsequent steps in the
successful building of a social network and execution of relevant
activities. Approaching the schools, societies, and ministries will be
done through both the top down – contacting the deans and heads and
asking them to act as gatekeepers to those that they represent – as
well as bottom up from the Supercourse network of 48,000 individuals
who are associated with an estimated 60% of the schools. This process
is still in its infancy and we are willing to share our expertise with
others who have ideas about building scientific social networks or wish
to collaborate on such a project in the future.



Application to Central
Asia



The use of the fishing techniques described in depth above can be
directly applied to the creation of a scientific social network
specific to the five countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). The Central Asian countries
currently have a low level of connectivity amongst scientists, public
health professionals, doctors, dentists, nurses, and others in health
related disciplines.




Creating this network of Central Asian individuals will be the first
step in collaborations with others in Central Asia and around the
world. The launch of the Central Asian Research and Educational Network
(CAREN) three years ago put researchers in a unique position to
interact with others which had not previously existed due to the
digital divide, the inequalities between groups in access to, use of,
and knowledge of information communication technologies. “CAREN will
help [in] decreasing the digital divide and will directly contribute to
the development of the education and research sector in the region by
enabling access to modern ICT technologies and support distant
collaboration through online applications such as telemedicine,
distance education, applications in energy and water resources
management, seismology and environmental studies” (European Commission,
2012).




Collaborations amongst scientists from Central Asia provide the
potential for increased publications from authors in these countries.
Currently, the five countries of Central Asia have low productivity
with regards to publications. Uzbekistan is the only country in Central
Asia to publish above the median (LaPorte, 2011). Increased publication
can, in turn, create more of a demand for collaboration with scientists
in Central Asia.




With the development of a Central Asian scientific social network, the
need for country and region specific public health lectures increases.
Developing these lectures and disseminating them to medical, nursing,
dental, and public health graduate students each year will create an
expansion of the network as these students go on to graduate and enter
the professional workforce.



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