International Conference 2024 | Lessons Learned from an International Research Collaboration Panel

The 10th International Conference on Social Work in Health and Mental Health (ICSWHMH) was held in November 2024 in Melbourne. This significant event in successfully brought together social work professionals, researchers, educators, and students from around the world to discuss and share the latest developments in the field of social work in health and mental health.

The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts - Lessons Learned from an International Research Collaboration Panel

This panel outlines the challenges in the process and outcomes of an international research collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. While setting research questions, researchers from varied contextual influences carried individual emphasis.

The following will be shared:

Hong Kong: the methodology of building a conceptual framework with shared standard core variables and a small, unique number of variables for each site. The team will introduce the online survey platform and the standardized codebook we created.

Australia: The ways the team motivated the participants and the use of qualitative data collection methods.

Israel: The ways mixed methods assisted in understanding the role of preparedness for the next pandemic.

Singapore: The struggles of the clinician-researcher role as part of the implementation challenges.

Canada: the under-presentation of Indigenous and racialized participants.

Mainland China: the underestimation of the complexity of data transfer and aggregation. The team will share this challenge and their responses.

Taiwan: the transferrable knowledge into practice.

Discovering the similarities between health social workers worldwide created a strong sense of unity. The social workers’ resilience also uplifted their morale. This collaboration demonstrates the power of teamwork and mutual learning. The whole is greater than the sum of each of us.

Presenters:

• Prof Miriam Schiff (Israel)
• Ms Sophie Cheng Xiaolin (Singapore)
• Dr Samuel Shih-Chih (Taiwan)
• Dr Fang Fu (China)
• Dr. Amy Chow (Hong Kong)
• Prof Lynette Joubert (Australia, VIC)