Table 7 Respondent recommendations for research evidence engagement in pharmacist prescriptive authority

Research should be clearly relevant to policy-makers’ goals

“I think that it’s sort of keeping up with where different policy trends are or major issue areas are and then reaching out to people who—to legislators to make them aware of their research would be helpful.”

Maintain connections with policy-makers

“You can’t just, like, show up when you need something, so to create a network and a relationship with, like, influencers prior to and even…creating that relationship. So that to me is the most important thing.”

Tailor research dissemination to audience

“…about sending, you know, about press releases that talk about the practical implications of this research…”

“look at research and site numbers, especially if you have nice visual like graphs or tables, that always helps make a stronger case…. Remember that their audience is…probably is not going to be research-oriented and not going to be an academic. So while of course you still want a really robust study design, it really comes out on the back end to think about how that evidence is portrayed for potential lay-people.”

Leverage stakeholders

“And I think that in every state there is a college of pharmacy… you know, state college of pharmacy is indeed a great resource for legislators who are interested in such things.”

Continue to build evidence base

“Publish often, publish more… even if the research showed, hey, this didn’t work. That would be useful too because there just really was…you know, there’s not always a lot of data.”