Building partnerships and relationships in research and implementation
08/04/2008
Recently the World Congress for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion was concluded on March 18, 2008 and a dominate theme throughout the event was the question “How do we get research to have more influence on policy?”
Highly regarded academics expressed their concerns that research they conducted that demonstrated evidenced good practice was not being widely adopted by practitioners or decision makers to enhance the health and well-being of citizens and discussions took place to find ways to improve this. Common statements revolved around the importance for researchers and practitioners/implementers to build working partnerships at an early stage of a project or activity to ensure the key aspects for both research and implementation are understood and planned into the work to be undertaken by both domains.
Providing research findings by publishing results in a journal is important to communicate the results, but to ensure their up take into communities more needs to be done. Working with practitioners in NGO settings for example can assist to make this happen by researchers directly being part of the working committee from the beginning of a project. Undertaking action together is essential throughout the process to ensure the needed steps to enable the evidenced research is integrated and process adjusted as the implementation activities unfold and challenges or barriers may need to be overcome.
This includes setting the research agenda. Often it may be an NGO that is aware of a policy that is under development or discussion for revision and can alert researchers to the information gaps and needed evidence that will assist to advocate for a positive public health policy. Such was the case in the long journey to have only the sale of child resistant lighters available in the EU. NGO advocacy groups work many hours with the support of researchers to attain data and proven case examples from other countries to provide clear evidenced statements to decision makers to enable this legislative protection for children in Europe, which is now being enforced as of March 2008.
By working together, researchers and practitioners including those from NGO’s can use a complementary set of skills to move the political agenda forward and achieve greater health gains in the long term.
Highly regarded academics expressed their concerns that research they conducted that demonstrated evidenced good practice was not being widely adopted by practitioners or decision makers to enhance the health and well-being of citizens and discussions took place to find ways to improve this. Common statements revolved around the importance for researchers and practitioners/implementers to build working partnerships at an early stage of a project or activity to ensure the key aspects for both research and implementation are understood and planned into the work to be undertaken by both domains.
Providing research findings by publishing results in a journal is important to communicate the results, but to ensure their up take into communities more needs to be done. Working with practitioners in NGO settings for example can assist to make this happen by researchers directly being part of the working committee from the beginning of a project. Undertaking action together is essential throughout the process to ensure the needed steps to enable the evidenced research is integrated and process adjusted as the implementation activities unfold and challenges or barriers may need to be overcome.
This includes setting the research agenda. Often it may be an NGO that is aware of a policy that is under development or discussion for revision and can alert researchers to the information gaps and needed evidence that will assist to advocate for a positive public health policy. Such was the case in the long journey to have only the sale of child resistant lighters available in the EU. NGO advocacy groups work many hours with the support of researchers to attain data and proven case examples from other countries to provide clear evidenced statements to decision makers to enable this legislative protection for children in Europe, which is now being enforced as of March 2008.
By working together, researchers and practitioners including those from NGO’s can use a complementary set of skills to move the political agenda forward and achieve greater health gains in the long term.