Evaluation of a knowledge transfer scheme to improve policy making and practices in health promotion and disease prevention setting in French regions: a realist study protocol

Abstract

BackgroundEvidence-based decision-making and practice are pivotal in public health. However, barriers do persist and they relate to evidence properties, organisations and contexts. To address these major knowledge transfer (KT) issues, we need to rethink how knowledge is produced and used, to enhance our understanding of decision-making processes, logics and mechanisms and to examine the ability of public health services to integrate research findings into their decisions and operations. This article presents a realist evaluation protocol to assess a KT scheme in prevention policy and practice at local level in France.Methods/designThis study is a comparative multiple case study, using a realist approach, to assess a KT scheme in regional health agencies (ARS) and regional non-profit organisations for health education and promotion (IREPS), by analysing the configurations contexts/mechanisms/outcomes of it. The KT scheme assessed is designed for the use of six reviews of systematic reviews concerning the following themes: nutrition, alcohol, tobacco smoking, physical activity, emotional and sexual life and psychosocial skills. It combines the following activities: supporting the access to and the adaptation of scientific and usable evidences; strengthening professionals’ skills to analyse, adopt and use the evidences in the course of their practices and their decision-making process; facilitating the use of evidence in the organisations and processes. RAMESE II reporting standards for realist evaluations was used.DiscussionThe aims of this study are to experiment and characterise the factors related to the scheme’s ability to enable public health stakeholders to address the challenges of KT and to integrate scientific knowledge into policy and practice. We will use the realist approach in order to document the parameters of successful KT strategies in the specific contexts of preventive health services in France, while seeking to determine the transferability of such strategies.

Development of a knowledge translation taxonomy in the field of health prevention: a participative study between researchers, decision-makers and field professionals

“…The next step in the TC-REG process will be to decide on the best combination of KT activities to support the use of evidence according to local contexts. This work is currently underway, based on a realistic evaluation [2][3][4]. Realistic approaches aim to identify context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) configurations for a given complex intervention, i.e.…”

“…We used a participative approach between researchers, decision-makers and field professionals involved in the KT research project TC-REG. TC-REG, which is still ongoing, began in 2017 and is designed to assess a KT plan to improve policymaking and practices for implementing health prevention in French regions [2]. We argue that this kind of taxonomy can provide operational guidance to local health authorities in order to implement, evaluate and compare KT activities in the field of local health prevention and thus strengthens the evidence in this field.…”

“…Two main activities were found to be useful in developing professionals' skills to analyse, adopt and transfer knowledge into different contexts (pragmatic KT category 2), namely field professional/researcher interactions and training courses. The types of activities that appeared to be most effective were (1) reading clubs, (2) mentoring/guidance to develop evidence-based interventions, (3) training in line with andragogy principles, (4) e-learning, (5) supervision-related training courses, and (6) tailored training content (Table 2). Four activities were found to be useful to improve the organisation and processes in order to facilitate knowledge implementation (pragmatic KT category 3), namely creation/modification of social and professional norms to promote the use of evidence (to make the EIDM the decision-making principle), facilitation, collaboration, and participatory management ( Table 2).…”

“…In France, the Transfert de connaissances en regions (Regional knowledge transfer or the TC-REG) project was set up in order to enhance evidence-based practices within a specific field, namely that of local health prevention policies. The TC-REG protocol has already been published [2]. Briefly, TC-REG is a comparative multiple case study of a KT plan in the field of health prevention, based on a realistic approach [3,4].…”

“…Briefly, TC-REG is a comparative multiple case study of a KT plan in the field of health prevention, based on a realistic approach [3,4]. The project is designed to introduce activities aimed at improving the conversion of research-based knowledge into health prevention-related decision-making and practices in four regions in France and to assess their impact through a realistic evaluation [2]. While the process of converting research-based knowledge into decision-making and practice has been given several names in the literature [5,6] (Table 1 details the different terms), we adopt the most commonly used term, namely, KT.…”