| The purpose of this study was to examine the processes and supportive and inhibiting factors involved in the development, evolution, and sustainability of a child health network in rural Nova Scotia. This study contributes to a relatively new research agenda aimed at understanding interorganizational and cross-sectoral health networks. These networks encourage collaboration focusing on complex health issues that individual agencies cannot effectively address alone.;Data analysis identified political, structural, relational, educative, and responsive types of processes at play within the network. Three crucial factors that supported and inhibited the network were identified: (a) relationships, including issues of trust, embedded ties, peer influence, synergistic interdependence, power imbalances, and alienation; (b) politics, both provincial and regional, and factors such as policy implementation gaps and network legitimacy arising from a regional-provincial nexus, and (c) responsiveness, including six dimensions clustered as intra-network, network boundary-crossing, or synergistic extra-network.;Study findings are examined from the perspectives of asset-based community development, contextual theory, and complexity science. This research identifies the dynamic interplay among the network; central supportive and inhibiting factors; and micro-, meso-, and macro-organizational contexts. The discussion emphasizes the importance of explicitly focusing on relationships and multi-level socio-political contexts in understanding health networks as responsive complex adaptive systems. Findings suggest promising areas for child health network practice, interdisciplinary education, and socio-political system responsiveness research.;A descriptive qualitative case study approach examined the network's 12-year lifespan. Data sources were documents and network members, including regional and provincial senior managers from 11 child and youth service sectors. Data were collected through 34 individual interviews and 127 documents. Interview data were analyzed using framework analysis methods; Prior's (2003) approach guided document analysis. |
