Creating a Knowledge Translation Platform: nine lessons from the Zambia Forum for Health Research
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COMMENTARY
Open Access
Creating a Knowledge Translation Platform: nine lessons from the Zambia Forum for Health Research Joseph M Kasonde1 and Sandy Campbell2*
Abstract The concept of the Knowledge Translation Platform (KTP) provides cohesion and leadership for national–level knowledge translation efforts. In this review, we discuss nine key lessons documenting the experience of the Zambia Forum for Health Research, primarily to inform and exchange experience with the growing community of African KTPs. Lessons from ZAMFOHR’s organizational development include the necessity of selecting a multi-stakeholder and -sectoral Board of Directors; performing comprehensive situation analyses to understand not only the prevailing research-and-policy dynamics but a precise operational niche; and selecting a leader that bridges the worlds of research and policy. Programmatic lessons include focusing on building the capacity of both policy-makers and researchers; building a database of local evidence and national-level actors involved in research and policy; and catalyzing work in particular issue areas by identifying leaders from the research community, creating policy-maker demand for research evidence, and fostering the next generation by mentoring both up-and-coming researchers and policy–makers. Ultimately, ZAMFOHR’s experience shows that an African KTP must pay significant attention to its organizational details. A KTP must also invest in the skill base of the wider community and, more importantly, of its own staff. Given the very real deficit of research-support skills in most low-income countries – in synthesis, in communications, in brokering, in training – a KTP must spend significant time and resources in building these types of in-house expertise. And lastly, the role of networking cannot be underestimated. As a fully-networked KTP, ZAMFOHR has benefited from the innovations of other KTPs, from funding opportunities and partnerships, and from invaluable technical support from both African and northern colleagues. Keywords: Knowledge translation platform, Networking, Zambia, ZAMFOHR, Synthesis, Brokering, Communications, Capacity building
Background Since its emergence at the 2004 Ministerial Summit in Mexico, the concept of knowledge translation (KT) has become a leading approach in narrowing the gulf between research and policy. Often misunderstood as a technique to transfer research findings directly to policy, KT is more properly imagined as a dynamic set of approaches connecting research and policy processes.a Evidence-informed policy is as much a goal of KT as policy-informed research, signaling profound changes in
* Correspondence: [email protected] 2 Knowledge Translation Specialist, Berkeley, CA, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
how policy is developed and in how research evidence is created. To forge this cycle of policy-informed research leading to evidence-informed policy, KT isolates several important moments within this cycle. As KT is above all a so
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