Final Report: Stronger Together by Learning Together: Learnings from Supporting Academic Partnerships - STAR Collaboration Laboratory

The project's initial vision emphasized academic partnerships and knowledge, learning, and sharing, in addition to recruitment and support for fellowships and internships. The STAR project's academic partnerships aimed to enhance global health research and education for rising practitioners by fostering effective, empowered, and sustainable collaborations among U.S. and low- and middle-income country (LMIC) academic institutions. The goals of STAR's academic partnerships were to analyze and foster collaborations that increase the capacity of individuals and institutions to improve global health practice and outcomes. The Collaboration Laboratory (CoLab) was a key component of the STAR project, designed to better understand the key components of successful partnerships, develop new innovations and knowledge-sharing capacity around knowledge management (KM), build stronger partnerships among US and LMIC academic institutions, and facilitate dialogue among participants and their academic institutions. The CoLab experiment involved a Request for Applications (RfA) mechanism, which was widely advertised through public health and academic channels, and resulted in the formation of four partnership grants. The CoLab experiment showed that the partnerships were effective, empowered, and sustainable, with high or very high agreement on trust, communications, shared goals, decision making, expectations, satisfaction, and sustainability. The partnership assessments found that although academic institutions may not have been familiar with KM terms or practices, they all had knowledge management systems in place. However, there was a strong need to build KM capacity, especially within the LMIC institutions. The CoLab partners made outstanding efforts to complete their projects, demonstrating commitment, resourcefulness, and the ability to achieve results despite very real constraints due to COVID-19. All of the partnerships were expected to continue in some capacity going forward – beyond the CoLab grants. The STAR project's academic partnerships portfolio involved a three-pronged approach to build knowledge sharing capacity, support innovative learning, and examine what works and what does not in cross-geographic academic partnerships through the CoLab. The main goals of the CoLab were to better understand the key components to successful partnerships, develop new innovations and knowledge-sharing capacity around knowledge management (KM), build stronger partnerships among US and LMIC academic institutions, and facilitate dialogue among participants and their academic institutions. The STAR Committee, led by CUGH, played a critical role in the CoLab process, reviewing, analyzing, vetting, and pilot testing resources for the successful implementation of the CoLab. The STAR project's academic partnerships aimed to enhance global health research and education for rising practitioners by fostering effective, empowered, and sustainable collaborations among U.S. and LMIC academic institutions. The STAR project's academic partnerships portfolio involved a comprehensive review, landscape analysis, and development of two assessment tools to inform the CoLab experiment. The comprehensive review informed STAR's understanding of existing information related to formalized academic partnerships, focusing on four distinct types of partnerships. The Landscape Analysis Survey identified gaps, constraints, and opportunities within US and LMIC academic institutions, informing STAR, USAID, and other global donors to better address capacity strengthening needs. The STAR project's academic partnerships aimed to increase the capacity of individuals and institutions to improve global health practice and outcomes by fostering effective, empowered, and sustainable collaborations among U.S. and LMIC academic institutions. The STAR project's academic partnerships portfolio involved a three-pronged approach to build knowledge sharing capacity, support innovative learning, and examine what works and what does not in cross-geographic academic partnerships through the CoLab.