[Target audience: young researchers, masters and doctoral students interested/doing global health, postdocs]
I first heard of this phrase “Safari Science” in February 2017 by a seminar given Dr.Deenan Pillay in Boston, when he was talking about set-up of Africa Research Health Institute in Durban, Africa. The phrase refers to researchers “parachuting” (or “parasiting” as Lancet Global Health calls it) to the study site and spending very little time understanding the context and publishing papers that are scientifically valid (may be) but disconnected to the needs and wants of the community. In this case, he was talking about addressing a common concern of researchers/students who do not spend enough time in the study setting. This was not the main focus of his presentation (he probably spent 2 mins on this comment, out of the entire 1-hour seminar) but I have been thinking of this phrase ever since. Because I am guilty of this too.
Then I recently came across work done by Dr. Andrea Warren’s analysis on stakeholder engagement strategies deployed by scientists (predominantly situated at different research and academic institutions in the Global North in partnership with institutions in the Global South) conducting research in low- and middle-income countries. It made me think back to that seminar in 2017. Then more recently, I came across this twitter thread listing things that LMIC researchers should watch-out for — see Dr. Sam-Augud’s excellent thread on conducting research in LMIC (snapshot below — this thread inspired me to write this post!).
In the spirit of “not just describing the problem but doing something about it”, I have created a checklist for research partners engagement between researchers from global north (GN) and south (GS). These are based on my experience and how I might do better next time. Highly encourage students and young researchers to use something like this to start a discussion within your research groups, especially with your PIs.
This could even be submitted with the grant application (I hope funding agencies can adopt something like that – may be this already exists, please let me know if I am re-inventing the wheel?). This is just a draft template to assess your own engagement. Feel free to use it as you deem fit and also, welcome any feedback.
Proposal stage: collaboration with GN and GS partners
- Was the RFA sent to the GS partner?
- Did the GS partner respond with interest and contextual questions?
- Were there engagement (calls, emails, etc) and opportunities for feedback from GS partner incorporate? How?
During project stage:
- Are there routine meetings with both partners to talk about scope of work?
- Engagement with community – was community sensitization done ? Why or why not? what was the feedback from the community? What about member checking/ground-truthing/validating findings with communities?
- Opportunities for capacity building for young GS researchers like learning new tools, going to conferences to represent the project. [Nuance: Donors please take note to invite and fund researchers from both GS and GN to represent in donor meetings].
- Continued opportunities to analyze and review data together with all researchers.
- Opportunities to not just be a co-author but also to lead authorship. [Nuance: this is linked to how much money is allocated to GS researcher time and funding, especially after the data collection is done. Also, always have authorship discussion at the very beginning of the project, and continue to have this conversation as data comes in, analysis starts, and people shuffle between positions.]
Post project stage:
- Dissemination of findings to field team.
- Has results of analysis communicated to GS leadership?
- Has the results of the analysis communicated to GS field team? As a graduate student, I once saw an example of postdoctoral researcher Dr.Gwenyth Lee explaining the findings of a complex analysis to the field supervisor using de-jargoned words AND asked for supervisors’ thoughts and suggestions, which was later included in the discussion (and the supervisor was an author). It was amazing to witness this.
- How well dissemination actually happened with regard to what was proposed? [write specifics on how including local, regional, national, international]. How was this communicated (policy documents, presentation, webinars, conferences posters, etc?)
Have you seen an amazing engagement/collaborative practice that you wish everyone would do in global health/nutrition? Share it on twitter, comment here or email me!
