Connecting healthcare professionals in Central America through management and leadership development: a social network analysis

Abstract

Background: Leadership and management training has become increasingly important in the education of health care professionals. Previous research has shown the benefits that a network provides to its members, such as access to resources and information, but ideas for creating these networks vary. This study used social network analysis to explore the interactions among Central American Healthcare Initiative (CAHI) Fellowship alumni and learn more about information sharing, mentoring, and project development activities among alumni. The CAHI Fellowship provides leadership and management training for multidisciplinary healthcare professionals to reduce health inequities in the region. Access to a network was previously reported as one of the top benefits of the program. Results: Information shared from the work of 100 CAHI fellows from six countries, especially within the same country, was analyzed. Mentoring relationships clustered around professions and project types, and networks of joint projects clustered by country. Mentorship, which CAHI management promoted, and joint project networks, in which members voluntarily engaged, had similar inclusiveness ratios.Conclusion: Social networks are strategic tools for health care leadership development programs to increase their impact by promoting interactions among participants. These programs can amplify intergenerational and intercountry ties by organizing events, provide opportunities for alumni to meet, assign mentors, and support collaborative action groups. Collaborative networks have great value to potentiate health professionals' leadership and management capabilities in a resource-constrained setting, such as the Global South.

Predicting article citations using data of 100 top-cited publications in the journal Medicine since 2011

“…Topic categories referring to the MeSH terms [ 29 ] in each article were classified by using SNA. [ 4 – 6 ]…”

“…SNA [ 4 – 6 ] was applied to associate the 100 top-cited articles with topic categories and article types on a visual board to achieve the first goal of this study, highlighting the most outstanding entities.…”

“…[ 1 – 3 ] The former can be clustered by using social network analysis (SNA) and medical subject headings (MeSH terms). [ 4 – 6 ] The latter was evaluated by metrics (e.g., impact factor (IF), h-index, [ 7 ] or x-index [ 8 ] )…”

Classification and citation analysis of the 100 top-cited articles on adult spinal deformity since 2011: A bibliometric analysis

“…Only connections with more than one article or 40 article citations were displayed to create a clean layout. Network analysis [21][22][23] was performed to investigate the associations between the articles based on article subjects and major topic MeSHs using the "igraph" package. 24 We included only highly influential articles with more than 40 citations in the analysis.…”

Building management and innovation capabilities for global health: a senior executive program

“…When framing global health difficulties in the context of the rich North and poor South proposed by the Brandt Line (an imaginary division), the scope of the problem becomes even wider, as many of the poor nations are forced to face these challenges in a quotidian manner ( 9 ). By bringing together professionals from both geographies within the same cohort, there is not only an opportunity to enrich and provide them with a full-picture vision but also to generate shared value and networking ( 10 ).…”