One of the premier challenges has been communciations among scores of investigators at a dozen sites. CHS and ARIC are themselves multi-site studies. To be successful, the CHARGE collaboration has required effective communications: (1) within each cohort; (2) between cohorts; (3) within the CHARGE working groups; and (4) among the major CHARGE committees. In addition to the traditional methods of conference calls and email, the CHARGE “wiki,” set up by Dr J Bis (Seattle, WA), has provided a crucial and highly functional user-driven website for calendars, minutes, guidelines, working group analysis plans, manuscript proposals, and other documents. In the end, there is no substitute for face-to-face meetings, especially at the beginning of the collaboration, and this complex meta-organization has benefited from several CHARGE-wide meetings.
