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Table 1 Potential solutions to enhance stakeholder engagement in the research process

From: Stakeholders’ experiences of the public health research process: time to change the system?

Challenges

Potential solutionsa

Building and maintaining relationships

Dedicated communication channels and strategies amongst academic and non- academic stakeholders to share ideas, priorities and challenges such as regular newsletters, forums, social media or networks that encourage two-way exchange of ideas and insights

Collaborative priority-setting approaches within government, non-government and community-based health sectors, facilitated by multi-stakeholder coalitions, or collaborative meetings to enhance collaborative decision-making across research, policy and practice; for example, in Scotland, expert working groups have been established to advise government on key topics such as the Women and Girls in Sport Advisory Group (https://www.gov.scot/groups/women-and-girls-sport-advisory-board/)

Dedicated knowledge exchange services/programmes with specialist skills/training within or external to universities to connect researchers with policy or practice organisations and enable research to be more routinely informed by policy and practice and vice versa [35,36,37]

Create online repositories for lay audiences to summarise research to maximise dissemination and impact; for example, the SHaRE project at the University of Edinburgh is an online repository where practitioners and policy-makers can access walking for health research conducted in/relevant to Scotland (http://www.sparc.education.ed.ac.uk/share/)

Data/information

Make data publicly available in relevant repositories where appropriate

Publish accessible summaries of research findings suitable for the target audience, such as policy briefs, lay summaries or infographics, and identify ways of successfully disseminating these summaries to the target audience (e.g. through dedicated communication channels mentioned previously)

Evidence into action

Facilitation of consultation and action through professional associations related to public health; for example, Scotland’s Public Health Evidence Network was set up by NHS Health Scotland alongside key academic and non-academic partners, including the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy and Healthcare Improvement Scotland. The work of the Public Health Evidence Network is directly guided through consultation with policy-makers, who play a central role throughout

Professional associations for advocacy of the need for evidence into practice, using coalitions mentioned above to help with the translation of evidence into action

Culture

Celebrate and incentivise initiatives, projects and outputs including multi-stakeholder research teams, for example, through academic promotion processes

System/structure

Policy and systems change in both funding and research sectors to require or encourage academic and non-academic collaboration such as funders requiring evidence of stakeholder engagement in developing research ideas in grant applications or funding systems informed by evidence that address areas of greatest health and social need

Encourage and incentivise non-academics to publish research findings to build rigour of both evidence-based practice in public health and to help to collaboratively identify, on the ground, needs and opportunities from public health organisations and practitioners from relevant journals for non-academic publishing

Engagement of practitioners and other non-academic stakeholders through relevant adjunct or similar appointments in university departments (and vice versa) to facilitate research–policy–practice engagement

  1. aBased on study results, co-authors experiences and research (where available)