Analysis of interactions of actors of the knowledge network on malaria in Colombia

Abstract

Introduction: Malaria is a disease with a high impact on Colombian population, which must be approached from the point of view of teamwork of institutions for knowledge exchange.
Objective: To analyze the interactions of the Red de Gestión del Conocimiento, Investigación e Innovación en Malaria de Colombia.
Materials and methods: An analysis of social networks was applied that allowed identifying the proximity between actors and the degree of knowledge between them.
Indicators of density, diameter, average distance, and degree of centrality were observed. The documentary corpus for the study consisted of 193 technical documents published between 2016 and 2021, which were analyzed using text mining using the R programming language. The network was categorized based on five variables: comprehensive patient care, diagnosis, epidemiology and health information analysis systems, public policy and promotion and prevention.
Results: The analysis of interactions indicated that the network was made up by 99 actors. The main interest in knowledge production was on epidemiology and health information analysis systems (98 % of the actors), followed by the integral patient care (80 % of the actors). On the contrary, the least approached category was malaria promotion and prevention practices (54 % of the actors).
Conclusions: In general, this study contributes to the strengthening of key strategies in the dissemination of knowledge about malaria in Colombia.