Social Network Analysis of the Knowledge Network in Public Health in the National Observatory of Colombia: An Analysis of Documents

Abstract

Introduction: Social Network Analysis (SNA) is useful to identify the proximity between agents and the level of knowledge betwixt them. The objective of the research was to carry out an SNA of the public health knowledge network of the National Health Observatory. Materials and methods: 78 technical documents were collected from the network actors during the 2015-2019 period, which were analyzed employing text mining technics using R language program from directed networks and analyzing different indicators such as: density, diameter, distance, degree centrality and indegree centrality. Results: the interaction analysis pointed out that the agents, which conform the public health knowledge network, show a greater interest in the evaluation of public policies (82 nodes) and non-transmittable diseases (79 nodes). In this category, it was shown low densities indicating that there is a low connectivity between agents. Indegree centrality of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) were higher than the national agents. Conclusions: from the text mining of documentary productions, SNA allowed to identify interactions between the actors in all the analyzed categories. It showed a greater interaction in terms of evaluation and implementation of policies and dimensions of the Ten-Year Public Health Plan associated with a high mortality.