Friendships formed early in a researcher's career can lead to career-long collaboration -- ongoing sharing of ideas, joint projects between individuals, organizational partnerships as the researchers gain seniority, and other significant collaboration efforts. This was the message I took away from a talk by Dr. Roger Glass of NIH at the recent International Conference on Global Heath (of the Global Health Council).

Hearing this at the conference I thought of the amazing opportunities researchers have today to use online tools to get and stay connected with their peers around the world. I'm tooting our own horn here as a lot of our work focuses on online services to engage and connect professional audiences working on key policy issues.

But I was inspired by Dr. Glass's very personal comments about how some connections he made early in his career with other researchers led to long-term friendships -- friendships which have resulted in productive, decades-long collaboration at the individual and the organizational level. He mentioned how he became friends early in his career with various researchers from around the world, and they all then went back to their home countries around the world and advanced to key positions in research, academic and government entities. Now, he and this peer group are able to call on each other to tackle tough global health problems, marshalling some serious joint-efforts between their organizations

His comments make a compelling argument for the use of online tools to help young professionals in a field to connect with each other and to stay connected - so that they can collaborate on an ongoing basis as their careers advance. The online tools work well when they support offline connections (e.g. at conferences) but they can also support online-only connections.

The online tools to enable this can be basic or elaborate - such as professional directories, collaborative libraries, Q&A/discussions, blogs, professional (social) networking tools, and more.

Dr. Glass is from the US National Institute for Health, Fogarty International Center, which addresses "global health challenges through innovative and collaborative research and training programs and supports and advances the NIH mission through international partnerships."

Related:

PSI's Craig Lefebvre's blog post about the Global Health Conference mention such old connections that he renewed at the conference - and I suspect that his blog will help to sustain the connections.

Christine Gorman was at the GHC and on her Global Health Report blog summarizes the highlights she heard.

Nils Daulaire of GHC posted comments on "'Why rights?' some have asked. 'Why not just stick to health?'"

Forum One's Andrew Cohen posted on this blog about Using Mobile Devices to Aid Global Health

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global health council