Bill Keck, MD, MPH, Chair, Academic Health Department Learning Community; Chair, Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice; Professor Emeritus, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Northeast Ohio Medical University
Academic health department (AHD) partnerships require dedicated efforts to keep them operating, but are there best practices for maintaining collaboration? This second column in the
Ask the AHD Expert series explores the question of Standard Operating Procedures for collaborative groups.
Answer: This is an intriguing question, and one that is difficult to answer. Each environment and relationship between organizations is different, so all kinds of approaches are used in collaborations. While I am unaware of any formal Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), where you might find some commonality among groups is in the running and maintenance of an AHD – the running and maintenance of a collaboration. There are a number of elements that I and others have found important for keeping collaborations together. Whether an academic health collaborative or another type of partnership, elements such as developing a shared vision and defining specific roles for the various organizations involved in the partnership; setting goals and performance measures; keeping communication channels between, as well as within, organizations open and individuals informed; and structuring the partnership so that responsibilities, risks, and rewards are shared between the organizations can be key for maintaining a successful collaboration. Making sure to have champions within all of the organizations involved and collaborative buy-in to what you are trying to achieve can also have a significant influence on whether and how the partnership operates.
Underlying development of any kind of SOP needs to be an understanding of the culture within the various organizations that participate in the collaboration. Every organization has its own way of operating, and the culture within practice and academic organizations can be very different. The structure of practice organizations may be more hierarchical and a request for partnership may need to go up to organizational leadership for a decision, while academic institutions may be more horizontal and individual faculty members may be able to make decisions about engaging with other organizations. Practice organizations may have a need to obtain information quickly, while academic institutions may want to study an issue over time. Practitioners may have little interest in formally publishing the findings of a study, while academics may have publication expectations. Organizations can have very different structures and different pressures and motivators that play into the decisions that are made. An awareness of these dynamics will be critical to setting up and maintaining a successful collaboration.
Finally, in the absence of SOPs, the
affiliation agreements that organizations put in place to formalize their partnerships may give you a sense of how these partnerships are designed to operate. For example, the affiliation agreement between the Jefferson County Department of Health (JCDH) in Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health details the creation of a six member Advisory Committee with co-chairpersons and at least one meeting a year to oversee relevant activities, foster the working relationship between the organizations, and make recommendations to the Dean of the School of Public Health and Health Officer of JCDH. Details like these can offer a perspective into the operations of partnerships.
I recognize that these ideas are starting points, and I would love to see how others have addressed this area. Is this something we can tackle as a group and develop some sort of guidance that would be helpful? Please let me know in the Comments section below.
Editor’s Note: For more about collaboration, including perspectives on building and maintaining collaborations, Bill Keck has recently released a new book, “Working Together…On Collaboration,” which can be found on Amazon.
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