Key Findings and Lessons from an Evaluation of the Rockefeller Foundation's Disease Surveillance Networks Initiative

MacPherson, Nancy; Kimball, Ann Marie; Burke, Charlanne; Abernethy, Neil F.; Tempongko, Sandra; Zinsstag, Jakob

doi:10.3402/ehtj.v6i0.19959

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…They especially noted the importance of relationships built on trust, which in turn enhance disease surveillance and control at local transborder sites. Senior MBDS officials validated these views, and recent commentaries also support local cross-border cooperation as a promising pathway for the future [16,24]. The MBDS Action Plan spells out seven key strategies, of which six are directly and strongly relevant to all XB sites and hence were the major focus of our examination, as reported here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…Self-organized sub-regional disease surveillance networks have emerged in recent years as a model of transnational public health cooperation for disease surveillance and control [5,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Such networks have a bottom-up orientation in the sense that they are self-organized affiliations rather than assigned ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local cross-border disease surveillance and control: experiences from the Mekong Basin

Moore

Dausey

2015

BMC Res Notes

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BackgroundThe Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance cooperation (MBDS) is one of several sub-regional disease surveillance networks that have emerged in recent years as an approach to transnational cooperation for infectious disease prevention and control. Since 2003 MBDS has pioneered a unique model for local cross-border cooperation. This study examines stakeholders’ perspectives of these MBDS experiences, based on a survey of local managers and semi-structured interviews with MBDS leaders and the central coordinator.ResultsFifteen managers from 12 of 20 paired cross-border sites completed a written survey. They all monitor most or all of the 17 diseases agreed upon for MBDS surveillance information sharing. Fourteen agreed or strongly agreed with statements about the core MBDS values of cooperation, mutual trust, and transparency, and their own contributions to national and regional disease control (average score of 4.4 of 5.0). Respondents felt they implemented well to very well activities related to surveillance reporting (average scores 3.4 to 3.9 of 4.0), using computers for their work (3.9/4.0), and using surveillance data for action (3.8/4.0). Respondents reported that they did worst in implementing research (2.1/4.0) and somewhat poorly for local laboratory testing (2.9/4.0) and local coordination with cross-border counterparts (2.9/4.0), although all 15 maintain a list with contact information for these counterparts and many know their counterparts. Implementation of specified activities within their collective regional action plan was uneven across the cross-border sites. Most respondents reported positive lessons learned about local cooperation, information sharing and joint problem solving, based on trusting relationships with their cross-border counterparts. They recommend expansion of cross-border sites within MBDS and consideration of the cross-border cooperation model by other sub-regional networks.ConclusionsMBDS has over a decade of experience with its model of local cross-border cooperation in disease surveillance and control. Frontline managers have documented success with this model, strongly support it and recommend its expansion within and beyond the MBDS network. The MBDS cross-border cooperation model is standing the test of time as a solid approach to building and sustaining the public health capabilities needed for disease surveillance and control from the local to national and global levels.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13104-015-1047-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local cross-border disease surveillance and control: experiences from the Mekong Basin

Moore

Dausey

2015

BMC Res Notes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They are more literally “sub-regional” – organized by a smaller number of countries and built on a foundation of trust, cooperation, and mutual public health interests; they connect “bottom-up” local, national, and neighboring trans-national surveillance to “top-down” global and larger regional systems through “horizontal” cooperation across borders, disciplines, and sectors. These networks have demonstrated their value, judging from formal evaluations (7–11) and based on networks’ own descriptions of joint investigations of priority diseases and other activities that ranged from human and system capacity building to pandemic preparedness and regional support to a member country following a major natural disaster (12–17). But challenges remain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%