How can we achieve impact from public health research? A meta-ethnography of case studies.

BACKGROUND: Generation of public health impact from research is challenging. Research of similar quality often has differential uptake and there is considerable lag time between initiation and uptake of research. Improving understanding of how research impact can be achieved may identify areas stakeholders could target. METHODS: This work uses meta-ethnography to synthesize 21 case studies exploring how researchers have generated public health policy impact. RESULTS: Eight constructs were identified: expertise; motivation; practical solutions to important problems; support structure and funding; collaboration; wide dissemination and use of media to contribute ideas to the wider narrative; understanding the policy realm; and models of impact. The constructs were combined in a lines-of-argument synthesis, producing a model that seeks to illustrate the diffuse, complex and dynamic nature of the process of generating impact from research. CONCLUSION: Achieving research impact involves seeking to shape wider debates, building relationships with policy makers, becoming a trusted collaborator and being available to provide relevant and practical solutions to questions of concern to policy makers at the appropriate time.

Why is translating research into policy so hard? How theory can help public health researchers achieve impact?

OBJECTIVE: To describe how overly simple conceptualisations of how research is translated into public health policy impact impair effective translation. To suggest how alternative approaches to conceptualising impact, which incorporate recent developments in social and political sciences, can help stakeholders improve translation of high-quality public health research into policy impact. STUDY DESIGN: Researchers often describe generating impact in terms of linear or cyclical models, in which the production of scientific findings alone compels action and leads to impact. However, such conceptualisations do not appear to have supported improved translation of research into policy and practice. Improving understanding of how research impact is achieved may identify areas stakeholders seeking to achieve impact could target. METHODS: Overview of theoretical and practical approaches to achieving public health policy impact from research. RESULTS: Despite much evidence that translating research into public health policy is more complex than linear and cyclical models suggest, stakeholders often revert to these heuristics, that is shorthand ways of thinking that allow simple but inaccurate answers to complex problems. This leads to potentially missing opportunities for impact, such as conducting research in collaboration with local policy makers and contributing ideas to the wider narrative through the media and public engagement. CONCLUSION: The process of translating research into impact appears more complex than that suggested by linear and cyclical models. Success involves a planned approach targeting multiple routes to impact, sustained over time.