Critical Local Connections Posted on January 11, 2008 For Margaret R. Weeks (bio), building international connections began with sharing research findings.

In the international studies that we’re working on now, the development of the collaboration is sometimes serendipitous and sometimes it’s being in the right place at the right time. As it happens the person we’re working with now was brought in touch with the former Director of the Institute for Community Research, which I’m the current Director of at this point.

A study that we were conducting in Hartford, Connecticut, had some potential application to the work that she was doing in China. And with that we had her come and present her research to us, and we went and presented our research to them. And from that we developed the interest and then eventually the design to work on a project together.

She has long-standing ties to the communities that she’s been working in with researchers from her research institute, which is based in Beijing, but also with community health providers and public health educators and public health personnel in the local and the provincial and county level as well as in the townships. So she could bring us as U.S. investigators into contact with her deep connections in the community, and that was really essential for the project to be able to develop in an effective way so that it was something that we really could carry out together. And we’ve worked together with the community people throughout the entire process, developing a lot of the concepts together.

Although the first study really was taking our Hartford study and modifying it to the Chinese context, our second project was built together, one that we’ve just, really we’re just getting it off the ground right now, so we’ll see how it goes. But again the local connections have been really critical, and their participation in the practical aspects of developing the design so that we have a project that can actually be carried out once we get to the point that we’re trying to collect the data, trying to implement an intervention to reduce risk.

In this case it is an intervention to promote the female condom in places where women are engaged in sex work. So it’s a very tricky topic, and it’s a very tricky context to try to do a project like this. And it really needs local support.

It needs the people who are involved in public health to help us get access. It needs local clinicians to provide backup support for women who are interested in using but need someone to help them just get information, get access. And for all of the data collection process, it’s local people who are involved in that, and so we need to make sure that they follow protocols and they know what we need and what the expectations are for rigorous science. And so that’s an ongoing process of working with her and with them.

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