Healthier lives | He Oranga hauora national science challenge takes on the research -> impact challenge

The Healthier Lives NSC has been tasked with researching how to significantly reducing the death and disease burden and achieve equitable health outcomes from four of our biggest 'killer' non-communicable diseases (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity).

Like many of us, the team at Healthier Lives were feeling frustrated at how seeming little evidence is making its way into policy and practice - the pathways to having an actual impact from research.

As a result, they organised a hui consisting of a series of webinars (which you can watch here) and then an online workshop to "explore ways to strengthen" these pathways that could be embedded into our new health system.

In the workshop, attendees were asked to consider the following questions:

• which key elements are required in the future health system to create effective pathways between research, policy, and practice?
• what culture changes are needed to drive new ways of operating?

What came out of the workshops?
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Workshop participants agreed that "Aotearoa New Zealand needs more transparent and system-embedded processes" if these pathways from evidence to impact are to be achieved.

The questions prompted the identification of SIX KEY ELEMENTS and FIVE GUIDING PRINCIPLES that are needed if research evidence is going to be effectively embedded and actioned via policy and practice change.

The summary of findings from this workshop have been documented here: https://healthierlives.co.nz/webinar-pathways-between-research-policy-and-practice/, and summarised in the diagram below taken from page 3 of this report.

Only through the implementation of these elements and principles will we be able to "build the necessary processes and foster the collaboration required to ensure the best research is utilised to its fullest potential for the health of Aotearoa New Zealand".

So what jumped out at us?

Reading through the summary of findings had us nodding our heads A LOT. iPEN has been doing its own work on trying to understand what the systemic barriers and enablers to delivering impact from research, and it was reassuring to read many of the same themes emerging. 

The diagram above notes the critical importance of the 'who and how' (in the guiding principles, and multi-directional access to expertise) which also links nicely to our blog and link to Reed and Rudman's recent article about Rethinking research impact: voice, context, and power at the interface of science, policy, and practice.

They note (when summarising why there is a need for strengthening pathways) that many of the historical mechanisms for bringing wider voices in - who often create or facilitate these pathways - have been largely disbanded. Further, they note that although ad hoc groups might be useful for responding to discrete events (like COVID), they are probably insufficient to address the more 'wicked' diseases this NCS is focusing on as their causes are multiple and systemic.

(Sidenote - those of us who are systems thinkers may be having a 'duh' moment right now. Boundaries, perspectives, and relationships are our starting points.....)

Measuring what matters (what's valued) - even if its hard. Equity is a core focus for our health system, and that ensuring this is actually being realised means having to figure out ways to evidence this so change can actually be monitored and used to inform decision-making at all levels (local, regional, and national).

"While many [principles like tikanga] are widely accepted in rhetoric, they must be reiterated as they require commitment and action if we are to transformatively change the system"

Transparency means communicating information in ways that are understandable to others, and that this is fundamental in building trust and confidence in our findings.

In our iPEN training we acknowledge that when we spend so much of our time talking to our professional colleagues we can forget that not everyone speaks your science language. This can be a challenge as we have been trained to communicate in this way (i.e., with our academic peers through publications using the research equivalent of legalese).

Much like how learning another language is best done via the emersion method, figuring out how to communicate well with your stakeholders means getting to know them, and then using language they understand. 

How does all this link to our training and the advice we give?

​Figure out who your stakeholders and partners are/are likely to be, and involve them in your projects from the START. Try to recognise, understand, and manage power dynamics as part of this process, and know that relationships take time to build and maintain (and that this happens before, during, and after the projects themselves). Understand their context and use language and words they understand.

If you can hit all these marks, you'll be well on the way to strengthening your own pathways to impact.