Mapping Partners

More than 10 million children die each year in the developing world. Although mortality rates for children under five years of age dropped by 16 percent since 1990, the rates still remain high in developing countries. At current rates of progress, only a few countries are likely to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality to one-third of their 1990 levels

One of the major reasons for failure to achieve this Millennium Development Goal is due to the unavailability of sufficient resources and a lack of access to research and expertise in low- and middle- income countries.

Given these issues, CHNRI has identified the need of an effective mapping that will involve communicating on a regular basis, providing feedback, and being useful in many other ways. In 2002 CHNRI began its efforts in this area by funding three regional initiatives to describe institutions working on child health and nutrition research in their regions, to identify contact persons and contact details, to identify existing networks of institutions, and to describe the type of work they undertake and their future plans. In 2005 CHNRI planned to develop an online network, supported by a community of practice.

CHNRI ONLINE COMMUNITY
CHNRI online community (COC) is a web-based knowledge sharing environment that holds details of the interests of their users in the form of user profiles. The core feature of the CHNRI community will be a forum system where users can find and share information, ask questions, post answers, and create knowledge. COC will also summarize information on current advances in child health and research and share with the users.

It is being anticipated that Researchers and Research Institutions from all over the world especially from low and middle income countries along with different Non-profit organizations, Government Organizations, and Funding Agencies will actively involved in the CHNRI online community.

CHNRI online community will grow with the needs of its members. An open forum without context, guidance, and organization would not survive. The "Build it and they will come" approach has proven to fail with online communities. Organic, user driven growth has a better chance of sustainability and success. Community growth and increased audience reach are best accomplished by leveraging user feedback. Therefore, CHNRI will also develop a surrounding web site which will provide key CHNRI resources, explain the mission of the community, provide a publishing space for recognized community knowledge, and encourage researchers to take part. The site will incorporate a means for users to provide feedback. The more feedback that can be transformed into action, the higher the likelihood of attracting and retaining users. Some of the features of the CHNRI online community are given below:

  • Register, create and update profile
  • Search content
  • Create and maintain research activities profile
  • Discussions forum
  • Web based interface to send emails
  • Access educational materials
  • Authoring tools — which will allow the members to publish
  • articles
  • Research partnership list
  • Resources sharing
  • Funding opportunities
  • Event calendar
The profiles will include the research interests and output of researchers, and the activities of organizations in training child health workers, in applying research to policy and clinical practice, in collaborating with other organizations, and in setting child health and nutrition research priorities at country level. They will also help to maintain valuable contacts and contribute to generate of new ideas.