The impact of research translation is optimized when researchers engage different disciplines and types of organizations throughout the process.
Many groups play a role in effectively translating research to impact policy and practice. This could include other departments, local communities, county and national governments, NGOs and more. Stakeholder is a broad term and can include partners as well as a variety of external organizations.
Traditionally, projects wait until the end of funding to engage stakeholders. However, since many different groups can be involved in practice or policy in a particular health discipline, it is important to understand early which stakeholders are involved, how they can affect change, and how to engage them toward impact.
A previous article detailed approaches toward partnership in research translation.
“Your stakeholders are who could benefit from, influence, or carry on the message from your findings,” said Christopher Rice, research translation & policy lead at the IU Center for Global Health Equity. “They could include a hospital board, provider network, practice association, ministry, county government department, etc.”
Many tools can assist teams in understanding the broader practice or policy environment behind their work including: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT); network; context; forcefield and many other types of analysis.
Stakeholder analysis is a broad, comprehensive tool that facilitates information gathering among key actors to effectively plan for impact. This analysis can assist in mapping stakeholders by obtaining information about an individual or organization’s knowledge level on a particular issue, influence over it, and interest in it. While it is best to obtain this information through a formal stakeholder analysis study, this is not always possible due to time and budget constraints. In such cases, more abbreviated information on stakeholders can be collected through informal interviews and internet searches.
Based on this information, teams can prioritize key stakeholders and note which ones should be informed, consulted or actively engaged. A stakeholder engagement plan will include this prioritization as well as contacts, products and messages to share, methods for engagement, timeline and expected outcomes.
“For effective stakeholder engagement, investigators can look into co-design and co-creation with others instead of waiting to share findings at the end,” said Rice. “They can be more creative with event types – such as policy dialogues and workshops rather than presentations – as well as use their teaching skills to create more engaging activities. But the key is to be more intentional about it and plan early based on the information they have.”
Some approaches toward engaging stakeholders can include:
- hosting inception workshops to identify research questions and establish context
- establishing regular channels for periodic information sharing and feedback
- training community members
- creating research translation advisory groups
- hosting research translation strategy workshops
- hosting dialogues on existing policies and guidelines or on the interpretation of evidence
Methods such as community-based participatory research and participatory action research facilitate effective collaborations with local communities in the design and execution of research as opposed to doing research on communities and sharing results later. These approaches can be extended to practice and policy organizations as well to ensure their voices contribute to research. If researchers are more inclusive of non-academic stakeholders with a two-way communications exchange and a plan to engage them early in research, these stakeholders are more likely to feel ownership over findings. This can facilitate translation and increase uptake and impact.
Investigators should consider efforts toward larger research translation and communications strategies. However, a simpler place to start is with understanding who the stakeholders are relevant to a research initiative, which ones are priorities, and how and when they should be best engaged.
For additional information on planning for stakeholder engagement, see Section 1B of this research translation tools compendium.
