Linking Swedish, Nepalese and Indonesian capacities to inform the design of effective, efficient and equitable Social Network Interventions for health and poverty reduction: The ‘SNI-LINKS’ Network

This proposal is situated at the interdisciplinary crossroads of health and development research, with specific focus on social network interventions for health and poverty reduction. Social network research is critically underutilized in many LMICs.

As such, social networks remain poorly understood determinants of health and poverty outcomes and developing interventions remains a persisting challenge.

The purpose of the SNI-LINKS Network is to link together expertise and infrastructures of Swedish, Nepalese, and Indonesian partners to strengthen their individual, organizational and inter-organizational research capacities and competencies in network research to inform effective, efficient and equitable social network interventions.

Taking a dual perspective on tuberculosis and malnutrition – which represent major public health challenges in Nepal and Indonesia, SNI-LINKS aims to investigate the relationship between networks and precarity, i.e. healthcare and food insecurity, and to refine the processes through which network ties are activated in times of needs, i.e. facilitating pathways into treatment, utilizing food sharing networks.

This will be explored through a series of seminars and workshops aided by formative research activities.

Partners comprise of HERD International and the Ministry of Health and Population, Nepal; the Department of Public Health, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia; and the Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå University, Sweden.