Knowledge Broker Stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer

In the first story of this series I outlined how in 2003 that in my role as Director of the Ontario Occupational Health Services Network I brokered a transfer of knowledge from occupational medicine specialists to primary care teams.  I facilitated a feedback loop that helped modify a work history taking tool for ease and relevance of use in a busy primary care practice.  What of the workers for whom this tool was designed to make a difference?  What role should they play?  Did they have something to add to the process?  As we pondered these questions, subsequent knowledge collaboration began to take shape.

The Toronto Workers’ Health and Safety Legal Clinic disseminates a Worker’s Guide on the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act.  The Guide is a straightforward booklet that conveys in plain language what workers need to know about health and safety law.  I began conversations with the Legal Clinic about how the Work History Taking Tool was meant to support workers in very parallel and complementary ways to the Worker’s Guide.  The shared theme between the two initiatives was providing knowledge that would help workers prevent injuries on the job.

Into these conversations we invited the LAMP Occupational Health Centre, which provides health advocacy to workers, especially with respect to prevention and worker’s compensation.  We also invited St. Michaels’ Hospital Occupational Health Clinic, which by this time had posted the revised Work History Taking Tool on their website. 

With this additional focus on the worker’s perspective, we devised some additions to the Worker’s Guide.  We added a copy of the Work History Taking Tool to the Guide, accompanied with questions such as: “Did you know that your work and health are connected?” and “When was the last time you talked to your doctor/nurse about your work exposures at the workplace?”  These and a few other prompts then led the reader of the Guide to either ask their primary care provider to talk about work health risks or be more prepared and understanding when the topic arose.   

I am sure many of us could think of additional examples of involving consumers in the knowledge exchange process meant to make a difference in their lives.  Another example in my experience is work I did in the late 1990s as Coordinator of the Ontario Diabetes Complications Prevention Network.  In that initiative we assembled 8 regional networks that met every 6 weeks over a two year period.  Each network included specialists (endocrinologists), family physicians, diabetes educators and persons with diabetes.  The results of these network meetings helped inform the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care on its future policy directions.  The most significant follow-through from these joint provider/consumer meetings was the subsequent expansion of community-based diabetes education, mostly attached to community health centres in Ontario, which have a very strong consumer advocacy orientation.

Knowledge transfer in health and social services is becoming more integral to the design of service systems.  These two brief examples in occupational health and diabetes illustrate that consumers can be involved in stimulating the process of enquiry or advising on the design of service systems.   As knowledge brokers, I think we will need to think about many more ways to put the consumer at the centre of the process.  After all, it really is all about them.

Hal De Lair

To cite:

MLA format

De Lair, Hal, "Knowledge broker stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 16, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6AggSE

APA format

De Lair, H. Knowledge broker stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6AggSE]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque