How to Professionally Influence Knowledge Translation By Kakaire Ayub Kirunda

Please Click here for the  French Translation.

About five years ago I joined a maternal health research project at Makerere University School of Public Health, as a communications officer. The study project aimed at increasing hospital deliveries in three eastern Uganda districts. I joined towards the end of the project, at a time when most of the communication activities had been planned.

I worked on a couple of products like research briefs, oversaw the production of short films, and wrote some newspaper articles among others, all meant for the non academic audience. Similarly, the scientists on the team published in academic journals and made presentations at conferences, where they were applauded by their peers.

However in the weeks and months that followed the end of the study we started asking ourselves whether we had done enough to interact with those who would directly be affected by the knowledge we had generated or influence its uptake. We concluded that we did our best, but perhaps should have done more.

Deciding to disseminate most of the knowledge towards the end of the research meant that we were just doing business as usual.

The business as usual phenomenon means waiting until done with the bulk of the study, then start disseminating, mainly through the classic way - largely sharing with peers.

Learning from the past.

However, we [Makerere University School of Public Health] have since learnt our lessons and now are integrating knowledge translation in most of the studies being designed. A case in point is the maternal and neonatal implementation for equitable systems study (MANIFEST), which aims at improving maternal and neonatal health outcomes using readily available community based resources. By design, the success of MANIFEST depends on partnerships right from the community to governmental level, hence the need for integrated knowledge translation.

Unlike in my first case study, in MANIFEST, right from the design phase, we integrated and engaged those who will need to act on the findings. These included women and their spouses, opinion leaders like elders and the clergy, local government officials, health workers, and Health ministry officials. Similarly, during implementation, all these are playing a specified role in a collaborative process that will ultimately bring about ownership of the knowledge outcome by all partners.

We are beginning to appreciate what Parry et al., (2013) believe that “knowledge users possess an expertise derived from being members of their organizations, communities or professional fields, and have much to contribute throughout the research.” In other words brining knowledge users on board increases understanding of the problem, so is the context and environment where the research results are to be applied, and the ability to readily identify potential facilitators and barriers to the uptake of the findings.

Asking key questions

None-the-less, whatever you do to move knowledge into action by applying evidence to policy and practice is not straight forward as my MANIFEST case study may suggest.  You need careful thought and planning to be effective. To do this, you need to answer the following questions:

• Who will you reach?
• What are your KT objectives?
• What is the message?
• How will you format and deliver the message
• How will you assess the impact and revise the message?

Getting the correct answers to the above questions will makes things easier.

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What is your experience on influencing knowledge translation? Share with us.

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