Academy Strategic Focus Area 2
Build a multi-stakeholder MS data community
MSDA’s actions are intended to improve communications and collaboration between all stakeholders involved so that a mutual understanding concerning the nature and quality of data needed for several purposes is accomplished.
A virtual Stakeholder Focus Group meeting was organized in November 2020. This meeting focused on what we learned in 2020 and what our ambitions should be moving forward. We reflected upon the major lessons learned of the GDSI and brainstormed on how we can incorporate these lessons in our ambitions moving forward. The topics that were discussed during separate break-out sessions in the meeting are:
- Data harmonization and quality
- Stakeholder outreach and engagement
- How to grow our collaborative global data ecosystem?
- Other research topics and activities
More information about this meeting can be found here.
In 2021, we will again organize a Stakeholder Focus Group meeting in November. Depending on how the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, this will be virtually or on site (ECF Annual Meeting, 18-20 November 2021, Baveno, Italy).
During our relatively short existence, we noticed that there is a clear need to better understand the needs of our different stakeholders. To have a better understanding, we will perform a stakeholder needs assessment, implying that we will do semi-structured interviews with the stakeholders, combined with dedicated stakeholder focus group meetings.