Knowledge Translation for researchers: developing training to support public health researchers KTE efforts

Introduction

Calls for new knowledge products are increasingly accompanied with a need to plan research and produce findings that are relevant and useful to decision-making in policy and practice. Researchers have a history of participating in Knowledge Translation and Exchange (KTE or KT) activities; however, these are often performed informally and with a focus on end-of-project dissemination. KTE is defined as a process that includes synthesis, dissemination, exchange and ethically sound application of knowledge to improve health.1 The aim of KTE is to ensure that stakeholders are aware of and use research evidence to inform decision-making, and that research is informed by available evidence and the experience and information needs of stakeholders. To implement KTE strategies that are likely to be effective, researchers require knowledge and skills in a number of different areas. However, at least in Australia, capacity building initiatives to improve researchers' KTE skills, and incentives to conduct practice- and policy-relevant research, are limited.

Public Health Insight is a new initiative that focuses on ensuring that decision-making of relevance to public health will be informed by high-quality, timely research evidence. Public Health Insight conducts research, provides training and consultancy services, and incorporates the Cochrane Public Health Group. Public Health Insight recently sought to develop a professional development (training) course that would cater for researchers' knowledge translations needs. To respond to researcher KT needs and to ensure that stakeholder needs were identified, scoping research was carried out in preparation for the course. The scoping research proposed three questions: (i) What does the international evidence tell us about building KTE capacity? (ii) What KTE training is currently available internationally? (iii) What awareness, knowledge and skills do Australian public health researchers wish to develop? The objective in undertaking the scoping research was to understand how professional development, in the format of a training course, could strengthen public health researchers' KTE efforts.

J Public Health (2015) 37 (2): 364-366. doi: 10.1093/pubmed/fdv076

http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/37/2/364.extract