Knowledge Mobilization Works

Knowledge Broker Stories: The case of the accidental knowledge broker

2010-11-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

Dr. Vicky Ward

Story #14

The case of the accidental knowledge broker

Dr. Vicky Ward

In 2007 I embarked on a project which was designed to build a better understanding of the knowledge mobilisation process. Although there are lots of models and frameworks which depict knowledge mobilisation (linear models, cyclical models, complex system models) few of these have emerged from or been tested in real-world settings. The difference with our project was that this was precisely what we aimed to do.

In trying to investigate how knowledge mobilisation unfolds in the real world, in real time, we needed to set some boundaries around what we were investigating. We also knew that we would potentially need to facilitate the process in some way. The solution we hatched was ‘knowledge brokering’. A knowledge broker, we reasoned, would give us something specific to watch, would help us to gain access to settings where knowledge mobilisation was happening and would act as a catalyst for that process – speeding it up to fit in with the timescale of our project. The plan was to employ a knowledge broker who would be able to work with teams in a local mental health organisation and from whom we would be able to collect data about the knowledge mobilisation process (we never intended to assess the ‘effectiveness’ of knowledge brokering). Little did I know that this knowledge broker was to be me…

As the project researcher, my role included identifying and recruiting teams who wanted to use evidence in planning or evaluating mental health services. Because we wanted a good deal of buy-in from these teams I did this by ‘touting our wares’ around the organisation, looking for people who wanted to join in. I began by attending some high-level meetings to talk about the project and then began to meet with teams who were interested in helping with the research. Quite soon we began to realise that the idea of employing a separate knowledge broker to work with these teams was both unfeasible and unnecessary. After all, I had already built good links with these teams, positive relationships were developing and the teams had begun to believe that I was willing (and able) to work with them to help them achieve their goals, rather than single-mindedly pursuing some academic research agenda. So it was settled – I would carry on doing what I had started and become the knowledge broker working with these three teams.

Personally, I found this idea extremely challenging. I had read that knowledge brokers needed to be ‘experts’ both in the academic literature/knowledge which they were bringing to bear on a particular problem and in the real-world setting for that problem. In my case, this meant that I should be an expert in mental health research and mental health practice. The problem was, I was neither, since my training and early career had all been conducted in the area of music education! However, I soon found that not being an expert seemed to facilitate rather than hinder the knowledge mobilisation process. For instance, by being ‘constructively clueless’ I could help the teams clarify and articulate the problem they wanted to address, discuss their previous knowledge, experience and assumptions and consider the types of knowledge they needed and trusted and how this was likely to be used. The potential downside was that sometimes my input was not recognised as being legitimate, but this seemed to be more of a problem with senior managers than with the teams I was directly working with.

Having learned my lesson about being an ‘expert’, I proceeded to learn some other lessons about knowledge brokering and knowledge mobilisation. First, I found that knowledge mobilisation was hampered when knowledge brokering was seen as a ‘knowledge management’ role which was only performed by me. I saw that when team member’s emphasis was purely on getting me to find, package and disseminate ‘evidence’ on their behalf their problem-solving became fragmented, alternative viewpoints were not understood and evidence was used to support a pre-determined course of action. Second, I found that knowledge mobilisation was facilitated when knowledge brokering was owned and participated in by the team members and when it was shaped by their day to day activities and tasks. I saw that when this happened, it enabled different views of the problem to emerge and the team uncovered varying types of knowledge (both ‘academic’ and experiential) which could be used in different ways.

Following on from this project, I am now focusing on applying the lessons I have learned to other
settings. For instance, learning that knowledge brokers do not need to be experts has given me the confidence use my knowledge brokering skills in a range of different settings. Learning that knowledge mobilisation and knowledge brokering are complex, shared processes has also helped me to relinquish ownership and embrace more of a facilitation role. But perhaps most importantly, learning how the knowledge mobilisation process unfolds has given me a template for ensuring that my future research projects have the capacity to make an impact on the real world. Check out our website to see if it can do the same for you!

To cite:

MLA format

Ward, Vicky, "Knowledge Broker Stories: The case of the accidental knowledge broker." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 17, 2010. Accessed (enter date). http://www.knowledgemobilization.net/archives/222

APA format

Ward, V. Knowledge Broker Stories: The case of the accidental knowledge broker. Retreived (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://www.knowledgemobilization.net/archives/222]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: From Science to Science Communication to Knowledge Brokering

2010-03-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

Story #13

Even while doing my Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo (UW), I realized I wasn’t cut out to be an academic. Despite my great respect for scientists and the scientific process, the complexities of multivariate statistics and the interminable nature of the peer-review publication process ultimately tipped the balance for me in terms of pursuing other career opportunities.

Making connections, getting things done, often with or by partners, and, ultimately, seeing my work as practical and useful to others was what turned my crank. Since graduating, my career has been built more on my communication and organizational skills than on my understanding of the migrations of Atlantic salmon.

I’ll admit I was slow to characterize what I did as knowledge translation or brokering (KT/KB). So how did a “salmon biologist gone wrong” land at the sharp end of KT/KB in the federal government Science and Technology community?

My career’s been more meander than a defined path. Since graduating I’ve never actually formally competed for and won a position: doors opened, sometimes in the most unlikely of circumstances, and I happily walked through.

From UW I joined an NGO, unsurprisingly one related to salmon conservation. There I headed the publications arm and served as the Atlantic Salmon Federation’s Executive Director, Canada. My first official foray into communications.

Five years on, I was asked to join the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans to lead a disparate science group that did not “fit” well in the traditional fish-counting science structure. Consequently I had to hone my ability to “sell” what we did. I wrote prolifically, both in the peer-reviewed literature and in various other media. Day to day I managed research and operations, but science communication became a vocation.

A two-month detour for a liver transplant, and an unfortunate series of circumstances in the life of a colleague, meant that I was in the right time and place to take on a two-year interchange assignment as Director of Recreational Fisheries for the Province of New Brunswick. There, the ultimate challenge was getting science to senior officials and political masters in a timely, polite, engaging, yet firm manner. Speaking truth to power.

My assignment over, I re-joined the Feds, this time in Environment Canada (EC), once again leading a diverse group of researchers including some wonderful “entrepreneurs.” This time, explaining the needs of the Division to administrators proved a significant challenge, all the while continuing to build networks and promote the work of the unit more broadly.

My by-now standard “four or so years in a job” were up, and I was considering a senior position with a university. I asked someone for a reference and instead was persuaded to come to work for his organization. And so, serendipitously, I found myself in my first bona fide “science communications” job as Director of Science Liaison Branch with EC’s National Water Research Institute (NWRI).

I found I was pulling it all together: forming the unit, including hiring someone to run a series of national science-policy workshops, dealing with media and other enquiries, developing an internal newsletter, and revamping the NWRI website. I got heavily involved in the Canadian Science Writers’ Association, forged new networks, and eventually became a board member.

A major transformation in Environment Canada in 2006 included formation of a Science and Technology Branch. The new Assistant Deputy Minister, who came from outside EC and was part of one of those networks I’d been involved with, was aware of our work and thought highly enough of it that my group was somersaulted, literally overnight, into a more centralized role to cover the gamut of EC science activity for the new Branch.

In a fit of self-preservation, or possibly self-immolation, I accepted the role of Acting Director General, forming a new Directorate that included, surprise, surprise – several groups that had key functions, but were, like my own group, outliers among larger science-delivery Directorates.

Over the course of the following year I helped stabilize things in the new Directorate and used my new position to advance some science-policy linking initiatives close to my heart. I was also fortunate enough to be selected for the inaugural Science Communications Residency in Banff.

A two-week master class in science communications, this experience was a transformational micro-sabbatical. I was not a science communicator in the generally accepted sense: delving into the literature (with a big tip of the hat to the health field), and working with new collaborators, I came to better understand the nature of my group’s work.

What we did was very different from what I came to define in a 2008(1) book chapter as Big-C Corporate Communication. Our work was little-c S&T communication. It was, in fact, knowledge translation and brokering.

I stopped the grinding travel to and from Ottawa and elsewhere, and returned to my substantive position as Director of S&T Liaison. There, my unit has continued to build a series of KT/KB tools and approaches that are serving EC well and bringing demands from other federal departments and agencies to share and build on our experiences.

In October 2009, we hosted a federal Interdepartmental Dialogue on KT and KB in Burlington, Ontario, where a number of ideas were supported by the collective group (over 40 participants from 15 federal departments and agencies). These included a need to address challenges for HR classification of KT/KB jobs, build a KT/KB toolbox for federal departments, and the concept of a first-ever International KT and KB Conference and Community of Practice. Reaching out from there, we have discovered others with common interests, including, of course this site, Research Impact, and the KTECOP.

Needless to say, my current work is very much a team effort and I have been blessed to have been working with Leah Brannen and Karl Schaefer, my two Section Heads, for almost a decade. Staff turnover has generally been low and along the way we’ve collectively done some good, learnt from many challenges, published in the field, and had some fun.

You can get an overview of our activities via our EC S&T Expert (one of the tools we’ve built) profiles (Alex – Karl – Leah – Jaime – Michael – Shannon – Courtney – Julie – Kristin – Scott – Janet), and also access a Canada Public Service eMagazine feature on our work.

Or you could give any of us a shout…

Dr. Alex T. Bielak

Director, S&T Liaison

S&T Strategies Directorate

Environment Canada

March 2010

(1)Bielak, A.T., A. Campbell, S. Pope, K. Schaefer and L. Shaxson. 2008. From Science Communications to Knowledge Brokering: The Shift from Science Push to Policy Pull, p. 201-226. In D. Cheng, M. Claessens, T. Gascoigne, J. Metcalfe, B. Schiele and S. Shi (ed.), Communicating Science in Social Contexts: New models, new practices. Springer, Dordrecht.

To cite:

MLA format

Bielak, Alex, "Knowledge Broker Stories: From Science to Science Communication to Knowledge Brokering.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted March 25, 2010. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/d3oSDh

APA format

Bielak, A. Knowledge Broker Stories: From Science to Science Communication to Knowledge Brokering. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/d3oSDh]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Building the Science, Practice, and Profession of Knowledge Translation

2010-01-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

Story #12

Tinker: to manipulate experimentally

Tailor: to make, alter, or adapt for a particular end or purpose

Soldier: a person who works diligently for a cause

Spy: to discover by close observation or investigate intensively

I fell into the field of knowledge translation without warning. In 2001, I accepted responsibility and leadership for a provincial project that, ostensibly, involved training practitioners in child and youth mental health organizations to use a standardized outcome measure that would enable them to measure functional improvements in their clients and to manage treatment change. Use of the tool was mandated by the province, and we were tasked with ramping up 120 provider organizations; number of practitioners – unknown! This, in itself, was a large undertaking. In retrospect, there were many things I didn’t know about my assignment when I started. Not the least of which was the term “knowledge translation”.

Training practitioners to learn a new skill is an educational activity, or so I thought at the time. One develops a training workshop and makes it available to the target audience. Knowledge is provided orally, through didactic instruction and discussion. Manuals and other written documentation support learning, and hands-on instruction is provided in how to master the new practice; in this case, how to score, interpret, and use the outcome tool. A standard is set to measure mastery of the material, and then training is over. Or is it?

It was probably in the third year of this outcome initiative that I realized the following:

Effective training is not a one-off endeavour,
training is only the first component of practice change; implementation and adoption must follow,
many factors influence the change process and need to be addressed, and
people don’t want to change – this last point is a real sticker!

Practitioners we had trained earlier came back requesting refresher training, either because they hadn’t actually used their new skills when they were first trained, and/or because they had experienced significant staff turnover since their original training. Questions buzzed around me and my team:

Why weren’t people using what they’d learned?

Why didn’t they see the value of this new skill for their practice and for the kids?

How could we distribute training expertise and ensure that new staff were trained on-site?

Why did some organizations embrace the new practice while others waxed and waned or merely blocked us out?

How could we share the knowledge and enthusiasm of the early adopters with those who were not so keen to change?

It was about then, as we crested the mountain of our training labours, that we glimpsed the chain of mountains extending beyond. Oh dear.

Click went the proverbial light bulb! I was now aware that the assignment was a wee bit more complex than originally envisioned. The task was not simply training for a new skill. The task was to enable practice change in thousands of practitioners across the province. Like most academics, I went to the books and started to read. Surely someone has done this before! I was quickly immersed in multiple disciplines – business, education, health, and psychology – where I learned that practice change was an emerging field of study, and that while many were beginning to recognize the need for successful ways of changing practice and bringing evidence to the real world, very few had attempted this feat, relatively few had studied it empirically, and fewer still had attempted to change practitioner behaviour on the scale that we were.

My first inroad into applying what we would now refer to as a knowledge translation strategy came from the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in communities of practice (1991). This tried and true approach was proving useful in education, NGOs, and business in facilitating knowledge sharing on specific topics for communities of people. Might this be a useful approach for bringing the early adopters and the laggards together? Five years of regional communities of practice for practitioners, and one CIHR-funded study later, we know it is. (To date, approximately 6,000 practitioners have been trained to be reliable raters of the outcome measure.)

And in this way, my work on supporting practice change, and the program of research in knowledge translation that is embedded in this systems work has taken shape. Our team has studied communities of practice as a support strategy for practice change, developed a range of supports to augment the two-day training workshops that enable new learners to maintain ongoing contact with the experts, and we are now exploring the use of social media to support practice change. A 5-year CIHR Emerging Team grant with colleagues at McMaster is supporting the development and evaluation of an implementation framework that has us working with five child and youth mental health provider organizations and two school boards to figure out how to bring evidence-based practices into schools and mental health centres.

All the while, my foray into knowledge translation has followed another path. As I’ve watched the field develop over the last decade, it has been apparent that there are new developments in both the science and the practice of knowledge translation. With respect to the latter, this has been most evident in the rise of knowledge translation positions within health care organizations, educational institutions, community-based and volunteer sector organizations. I have taken an interest in these postings, whenever they found themselves in my ‘in’ box, and have met many of the people who have filled them. Many have found their way to the Ontario Knowledge Translation and Exchange Community of Practice, formed by me and my SickKids colleagues in collaboration with the Institute for Work and Health and the Health Systems Research and Consulting Unit (HSRCU) at CAMH. The KTE CoP has met three or four times a year since 2005, and we have helped one another learn about KT practice, methods, and science. Around the same time, my colleagues at HSRCU and I were funded by CHSRF to develop and evaluate a knowledge translation training workshop for scientists, the purpose of which is to help health scientists understand how KT plays a role in their science, how to engage with multiple stakeholders, and how to develop KT plans for science and measure the impact of their work. The Scientist Knowledge Translation Training© course continues to be offered through the SickKids’ Learning Institute.

These two activities coupled with a growing market for KT Managers, KT Directors, and KT Specialists highlighted, for me, the need to develop professional training for individuals seeking careers in knowledge translation – as practitioners, not as clinicians or scientists. And so, the Professional Certification in Knowledge Translation is in the making. Sponsored by The Hospital for Sick Children and its Learning Institute, and with the support of the University of Toronto’s School of Graduate Studies and Continuing Education for Professional Development office, work is underway to survey KT professionals across Canada and to develop a competency framework and curriculum. A link to the KT professionals survey will be posted on the Learning Institute website and the KTE CoP website, and circulated widely, in late January 2010.

It’s an inspiring area to be working in, and I greatly value all I have learned along the way, thus far, from my KT colleagues – the scientists, the practitioners, and the community partners who have joined us on the journey! There are new mountains ahead and much to tinker, tailor, and spy for this soldier.

Melanie A. Barwick, Ph.D., C.Psych.

The Hospital for Sick Children

To cite:

MLA format

Barwick, Melanie, "Knowledge Broker Stories: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Building the Science, Practice, and Profession of Knowledge Translation.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted January 3, 2010. Accessed (enter date).http://bit.ly/7xlBz6

APA format

Barwick, M. Knowledge Broker Stories: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Building the Science, Practice, and Profession of Knowledge Translation. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/7xlBz6]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy

2009-12-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

This is not so much a story as a reflection on some of the things I have learned about knowledge mobilization. Let me start with an example - the issue of staying in school.

We have volumes of research that show the benefits of graduating high school and getting at least some post secondary education, yet we continue to have higher than desired drop out rates.

How do we address this issue?

We don’t address it by engaging in yet another research project, we address it by identifying a specific audience and developing knowledge mobilization strategies to impact that audience and then determine what is the right information (which may or may not require additional research), right format, and right timing.

If you want to influence the teenager directly then you develop tools to reach them - visual graphics, e-games, peer role model programs, etc. and deliver them at a time when they are likely to be influenced. If your intended audience is parents you use different strategies. If your audience is provincial policy makers you use yet other strategies. In all cases, involving representatives of the audience (building relationships) as early as possible in the process will help ensure successful results.

Influencing decision making requires both the research and KMb to be audience driven - not knowledge product driven. They must both be demand (user need) driven, not supply (research or researcher desire) driven. I often hear a researcher say “well, I wrote this very important paper about issue X and yet things have not changed”, to which I reply “who asked you to write a paper about issue X?” and you can guess the answer I receive more often than not. Before engaging in a research project it is important to have a clear understanding of who your intended audience(s) is and what their needs are.

For a researcher, demand driven clearly means answering a question someone has asked. But what does it mean to be demand driven or audience driven KMb? It means adopting KM strategies and processes that will successfully influence the intended decision makers... and that is why getting the four “rights” in the above definition right, becomes critical.

Now if anyone says defining an audience as the driver for research is subverting the research process or that the research process is by nature curiosity driven, not driven by an audience, I would counter, all research, even basic science, is audience driven. It is simply that for basic science the audience is often so fundamentally understood, it is simply part of the research culture and thus often not even articulated. With a purpose of influencing intellectual discourse (adding new knowledge to the field), basic research has a clearly defined primary audience: the academy, either other researchers or students. The best way to influence these decision makers is either peer reviewed journal publications or academic conferences. In other words, an effective KMb process for an academic audience is traditional dissemination!

My Key Lessons:

¥The research process should be viewed as a whole, not segmented into “production” and “dissemination”.

¥Research and KMb should be audience driven. That is research design, implementation and knowledge sharing or uptake, to be successful, must have a clearly defined audience at its centre.

¥If we accept that research is intended to influence decision making then it follows that the KMb process is as critical as the research process and should be undertaken with the same rigour.

¥Just as quality research production requires an expert researcher, quality KMb requires expertise as well. Researchers should not be expected to carry the burden.

¥Partnerships are important. Establishing a partnership of relevant stakeholders up front, as you are defining the issue to be addressed, will dictate to a large extent, the type of research questions to ask, the most relevant research methods, KMb methods and KMb experts.

¥A project work plan and budget should include all aspects of the project , not simply the production component. (one of the most frequent frustrations I hear when I speak to researchers is that funders expect more comprehensive KMb processes than simply publishing and yet are often unwilling to provide either the financial resources or the time to deliver effective KMb. That said I also believe there is a fair degree of lip service paid to the aspect of KMb by many researchers applying for funding - they see it as another trend in funders and often cut and paste a generic KMb paragraph in their proposals without the true desire or expertise to carry it through. Ultimately both of these issues will have to be addressed before KMb is truly institutionalized across Canada.)

¥Just as there are multiple audiences, there needs to be multiple forms of KMb (there is no “one size fits all”). Influencing policy makers requires a different strategy than influencing practitioners or individuals.

As a society or as agencies interested in influencing public policy, if we are serious about our desire to improve the role of research in decision making we have to focus on more than simply excellence in research, we must also emphasize excellence in KMb. In my experience, once the question “who do we want to influence?” is answered, the issue of what type of research methodology, KMb strategy (ies) and stakeholders to be involved will become clear.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format

Rock, Daryl, "Knowledge broker stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 16, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/696X1C

APA format

Rock, D. Knowledge broker stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/696X1C]

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

2009-12-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system

2009-12-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

Knowledge brokers are an important component of the knowledge value chain. If one needs justification for knowledge brokers, consider what the U.S. non-profit sector looked like at the beginning of the decade: 1.6 million Organizations; 10.9 million Workers; $29 billion in funding; and 57,000 funding sources.

Many of these 1.6 million organizations had the same target populations: policy makers, researchers, families and children. The obvious question is, how can individuals, practitioners or policy-makers realistically assess, filter and apply information coming from 1 million plus organizations? How can we go on creating knowledge when studies show that less than one third of research ever makes it to an application/implementation stage?

That is where we come in.

My story is probably like some of yours. I spend the better part of my week fashioning existing knowledge into consumable formats. I enjoy innovation and look at brokering as an opportunity for process, market and technical innovation (as opposed to traditional product and service innovation).

To me, the brokering process is founded on various fields of study (marketing, sociology, knowledge management, change management, evaluation) as well as personal values (utilitarianism, equality, service, and advocacy). I draw on a tool belt of skills that are forever being sharpened or traded out for emerging market requirements. Right now, I would say the skills and values I draw on most are: passion, listening, humor, objectivity, patience, an outcomes orientation, flexibility and adaptability.

It’s the latter two skills that motivated me to write this post. Not too many years ago, under the mentorship of some wonderful future-thinkers, I spent quite a bit of time working on the front lines of developing intelligent systems. In these systems the literature often speaks of various types of “intelligent agents” (e.g., watcher/monitor, learner, shopping/buying, search, helper/personal, change, reflex, goal-based, utility-based, interface, mobile and data/information agents). Moreover, intelligent systems are fashioned to support decision-making; especially founded on just-in-time (J.I.T.) information.

A pitfall of decision systems is - they are often configured to answer questions/scenarios they think will occur. The reality is: everything changes.

Consider the evolution of knowledge systems.

Decision Support Systems (DSS): “Get me the third quarter numbers”;

Executive Information Systems (EIS), “Get me projections of fourth quarter numbers based on this scenario.”;

Intelligent System, “Can we sell Twinkies to China?”.

DSS and EIS are not adaptive and flexible, and it’s only been through the process of trying to automate Intelligent Systems that we have discovered the limitations of automation.

Years back, to build intelligent systems and better value chains, people began writing about the value of “knowledge workers”. Now we are beginning to better delineate what “knowledge workers” do (e.g., “brokering”).

Back to me. I won some accolades here and there this decade for co-creating knowledge communities and collaborative portals. Most recently, I’ve been developing a knowledge community in an entire new field of study for me that is showing promise. But, for fidelity-sake, if you asked me how this is done, I could not spell it out completely. Again, it’s an adaptive process, drawing on an ever-shifting set of skills. However, there are tactics worth sharing.

Things that fascinate me include writings about goal-oriented design, personas, and a concept that Gerry McGovern coined called “carewords”.

Simply put, using “carewords” is the process (via content analysis or survey) of determining the language information consumers (readers) like to use and then using that language to communicate back to them. It sounds like common sense, but once we operationalized this, our readership and information use went up 200-300%! Also, thanks to the concept of “push/pull/link/exchange” shared by friends in Canada, I spend much more time planning out networking and exchange activity in the knowledge communities I facilitate. I am a continual trend-spotter, but monitor with ROI in mind. I spend the better part of my days trying to get people to walk in information consumer shoes; talking to persons about extending engagement with information consumers beyond seagull events, while monitoring the decline of traditional dissemination…charting detours around fading knowledge practices.

Right now we can all say, “Remember typewriters”. One of these days we are going to look back and say, “Remember Twitter”. I think it’s this potential for continuous innovation, resulting in increased knowledge utilization that drives my passion for brokering.

Jonathan Green

To cite:

MLA format

Green, Jonathan, "Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 15, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6UYlPy

APA format

Green, J. Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6UYlPy]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective

2009-12-07T19:09:00.000-08:00

In 2001, when I became director of Strategic Programs at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) I was asked to provide colleagues with a clear definition of KMb. Already widely used in academic circles, the term KMb was nevertheless still not very well understood. And it was even less well understood by decision makers outside of the ivory tower.

After reviewing various definitions and finding none of them to be as clear as I would need in addressing the various audiences with whom I interacted, I created my own definition. My driving criteria was to create a definition that would be readily understood both within and outside of academe, remembered, and useful in helping to integrate research into mainstream decision making processes. The definition I created was:

Knowledge mobilization is getting the right information to the right people at the right time in the right format so as to influence decision making.

This easy to remember definition has become widely known and used by academics, policy makers and practitioners around the world. As you read it you realize that KMb is not an “end of the research process” activity but rather is integral to the entire process, from initial question design, through implementation to outcomes. With this definition I was attempting to explain, in common language, a process that is often complex, time consuming and iterative. Having presented this over the years to countless groups I continue to have people come up to me and say “I get it now!”

The core phrase is “to influence decision making”. I chose the word “influence” consciously. Some ask why not the word “inform”? The one implies action while the other is more passive and as I will outline below, successful KMb is about action. Clearly this reflects a personal bias but in fairness I think it a valid one. That is “funded research is intended to influence decision making by someone, not simply to add new knowledge to the world at large.”

“To influence decision making” requires an understanding of who’s decision you are trying to influence - who is the intended audience of this evidence and why? Understanding the intended audience is the core to successful KMb and that understanding will only come through an established relationship. It is not that you cannot share information with an audience you do not understand, this happens all of the time. But to truly influence that audience you must “get inside their heads” and the best way to do that is by involving them in your process, establish a relationship, get to know them. (As an aside, marketing experts know this and can be quite effective at influencing behaviour, even without evidence!)

You will note there are four “rights” in this definition and as logic logic dictates “for every right there is a wrong!” The more wrongs you have, the less likely you are to achieve your goal: “to influence decision making” about a certain issue. Once you have a clearly identified audience, the “what”, “when”, “where” and “how” become easier to answer. So often we develop what we consider to be the “right” information only to present it in the wrong format or at the wrong time or to the wrong audience.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format

Daryl, Rock, "Knowledge broker stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 7, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6TntBs

APA format

Rock, D. Knowledge broker stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6TntBs]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships

2009-12-04T08:35:00.000-08:00

My interest in better connections between research and practice is long-standing and deeply rooted in the various kinds of work I have done in education. As a young, elected member of a school board in Manitoba in the 1970s I was struck by how little of our policy seemed to be based on sound evidence. Later in the 1970s I was the director of a small non-profit organization in Manitoba that worked on bringing evidence to bear on policy and practice. That is when I did my first real KM work – writing various short summaries of research findings for educators.

Since that time my career has gone back and forth between academia and government. I also served for a couple of years as Chief Research Officer for the Peel School District in Ontario. I’ve been a professor and researcher at The University of Manitoba and now hold a Canada Research Chair at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education). I’ve also held senior civil service positions in education in Manitoba and Ontario, including serving as deputy minister in each province.

In all these roles I’ve worked to bring research into the policy process more strongly and effectively. Much of this work was intuitive – for example, producing summaries of research for educators, which is something I have done in four or five different organizations. In government I’ve helped to create, in both Manitoba and Ontario, stronger practices around knowledge mobilization not only in making policy, but as part of the work of both ministries.

In my current role as a research chair, my primary research focus is on knowledge mobilization; I have a team of graduate students and external partners with whom we work. Our program of research and KM can be found on our website – www.oise.utoronto.ca/rspe.

This is an exciting time to be working on KM issues. There is a worldwide explosion of interest in the field, not only in education but in other sectors as well. Many initiatives are underway, but just as importantly, more research is being done so that knowledge mobilization can itself become guided by stronger knowledge, so that less effort is wasted on well-intentioned but ineffective practices. For example, a great deal of effort goes into creating organizational websites, yet many sites get very few visitors. Moreover, according to the analysis our team is doing, many sites do not use principles of effective communication. Similarly, much effort goes into creating research products of various kinds but often these products are poorly designed in relation to what we know about effective communication. Even more, we know that the key to mobilizing knowledge is creating lasting interpersonal relationships that carry over into daily work, yet a great deal of KM work is still in the old world - rather like my message here – of trying to convince people through writing. So there is much room for improvement and greater impact, even within existing resources and efforts.

Ben Levin

To cite:

MLA format
Levin, Ben, "Knowledge broker stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships" Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 4, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/5Uy46s

APA format
Levin, B. Knowledge broker stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/5Uy46s]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb!

2009-11-24T08:58:00.000-08:00

My story is not much different from other people working as knowledge brokers. No one aspires to do this work at an early age. As a child, my mother said I wanted to clean streetlights. Well, a healthy respect (OK, fear) of heights has all but squashed that dream, but I do feel in all honesty that I may have the best job at York University, that of knowledge broker.

First, I feel a little background is in order. My career before beginning at York was in adult education, more specifically, Aboriginal literacy, where for 15 years I worked as a practitioner, project manager, trainer, consultant and as a researcher. My interests in research and my abilities to respect and liaise between the unique environments of research, program delivery and policy analysis gave me the confidence to walk into a completely new role at York University in February 2006. With no clear blueprint on how to develop an institutional knowledge mobilization unit, I was led by values of honesty and respect to develop the relationships – both within and outside of the university – necessary to support this work. These values were reinforced to me early in my career as critical for building credible and trusting relationships with people across sectors.

My brokering responsibilities have me working with enthusiastic graduate students, brilliant academic researchers (across multiple disciplines and departments), innovative community leaders and dedicated policy professionals. My challenges are in creating a clear and common understanding to the opportunity, the constraints from all parties and the needs for resources and ongoing support. It has been exciting to see ideas shared over a coffee emerge into a large-scale collaborative project!

I enjoy the learning opportunities that come with working with an emerging community of knowledge brokers across Canada. These learning opportunities come through my interactions with colleagues across Canada, here at York, and in all aspects of my life, because my teachers extend beyond 9-5 (or 7-3 in my case)! I like the fact that the values I bring to my work help make me a better worker.

I have reflected on my role at York and honestly feel that there is no better place for me within the university. I no longer aspire to clean streetlights, but I do feel like I am living the dream!

Michael Johnny, MA

Manager, Knowledge Mobilization

York Research Tower, 2nd Floor

4700 Keele Street

Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

416-736-2100 ext. 88876

mjohnny@yorku.ca

www.researchimpact.ca

To cite:

MLA format

Johnny, Michael, "Knowledge broker stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb!" Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 24, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/8iYgYy

APA format

Johnny, M. Knowledge broker stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb! Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/8iYgYy]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: Knowledge Broker Through Partnership Working

2009-11-10T06:04:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 2009 I presented my Inaugural lecture to mark being made Professor of Child, Family and Community Health at the University of Brighton. Often an Inaugural traces the intellectual roots of professorial achievement and is aimed at a university audience. But for me it provided a unique opportunity to talk about working with the community on issues that are important to them. The title of my talk? ‘What makes us resilient?’ Determined that this presentation should be fully accessible to the public, I worked hard to make it part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. Astonishingly my talk was so oversubscribed that I’ve now had to deliver it several times in different locations. My kids are getting very bored of turning up for it, and soon I’ll have to bribe them to come. My inaugural tells the story of how, from a background of poverty and disadvantage, I ended up doing a doctorate at the University of Oxford, adopting three children with special needs from the care system, training to be a practitioner working directly with disadvantaged children and families myself, and researching practical approaches to resilience.

I’ve always tried to live by the now famous slogan ‘the personal is political’, and intellectually understand my career narrative to be embedded in this term. Throughout my life I’ve worked closely with those whose lives are barely – or perhaps invisibly – touched by the concerns of the university. Moving on from a research investigation into what was wanted by parents and carers in the way of fostering and adoption support services, I began working as a psychotherapist in the child and adolescent mental health services, becoming increasingly interested in practical ways to work with children with complex needs. And, with the emphasis on practice, my research work relates the findings of hard research to practical interventions, feeding back into the research process knowledge of the needs, the practicalities, and the effectiveness of resilience work. I am working through several ‘Resilient Therapy Communities of Practice’ (RT CoPs) set up on the south coast of England. Communities of practices are groups of people who join together with a passion for a shared interest. Ours is helping children with complex needs to bounce back through applying the resilience evidence base to practice and to family life. The term RT CoPs is a bit of a mouthful, but what we do is very practical. These RT CoPs are composed of parents, carers, students, health and social care practitioners and researchers. We meet together once a month in a facilitated space to apply RT to our different settings and co-create books, training materials, etc. to support the development of RT. CoPs are a template for other social concern groups, not just to be a sounding board, but to be active investigators in their own right.

Luckily, the University of Brighton has always been supportive of a ‘partnership’ approach to my research, and over the last few years the University’s Community-University Partnership Programme (Cupp) has been able to expand its own work substantially, along with an overall shift in emphasis at the Corporate level towards partnership and collaborative working http://www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp/. In an ambitious collaboration, 40 community members and academics produced a ‘warts-and-all’ book on our collective experiences in community-university partnership development.

As Academic Director of the Community University Partnership Programme, I have learnt a great deal about developing mutually beneficial partnerships with communities and their organisations, and about incentivising other academics to become involved in this type of scholarship. Over the past year, I have been invited to Canada, Sweden, Germany and Australia to talk about, and to talk to, those involved in the practice of exchanging ideas. I never lose an opportunity to stress how important it is to draw strength and knowledge from the local community, and how community partners need to lead developments too, otherwise we academics are in danger of finding ourselves talking only to each other. I stress that partnership working is a two-way process that can, and should, transform not just what work is selected for investigation, but the manner in which it is undertaken, and the processes by which it is made available more widely.

All of this quite a lot to juggle, but at the same time, is immensely rewarding. If there is one sticking point to pick out, it is not the common narrative about recognition of my work in tenure and promotion etc. Rather, it is a disappointment that I do not always succeed in persuading academics and university establishments to put the kind of hard work necessary into including community members and their organisations in ‘meta-level’ conversations and decisions about community-university partnerships (for example at conferences, seminars and working groups). Time and time again community university partnership conferences take place with but a smattering of community participants present. I know from my own experience, that capacity building in this area is very complicated and time-consuming. Simply inviting people to attend events isn’t enough. It involves meticulous, long-term relational work, the imagination to recognise the barriers to community participation (funds, time, inaccessibility of academic discourse, perceived strategic relevance etc.), and the determination to overcome them. Hard work and a tall order on top of everything else I know. Yet, if those of us with leadership roles in universities don’t put the work in here, we risk community members and their organisations forever being peripheral players, rather than co-producers of knowledge. All this strongly reminds me of the mental health service user slogan ‘Nothing about us without us.’ Would that this were true in the world of community-university partnerships.

As my colleagues and collaborators would be the first to point out, these kinds of partnerships are not easy – power dynamics are rife as the literature in this area discusses at length. Also, I have enough self-knowledge from years of lying on a couch whilst training to be a psychotherapist to realise that I can be a right pain to work with at times. But at least life is never dull in our world of community university partnerships, and there are always spaces to be found in which we genuinely deliver on mutually beneficial work. I firmly believe that when we get it right, working together produces better practice and better scholarship. Putting people in touch with one another for mutual benefit is a privilege, as is listening to the stories people tell us about their concerns. Making my own, albeit it sometimes bungled attempts to develop a career within this paradigm, is a clear priority for me. Equally valuable is the opportunity this kind of knowledge brokering presents to evidence that universities can and do offer their services to others, for the greater benefit of all, not just for those lucky enough to be ‘ivory tower’ educated.

Resources referred to:

Aumann, K., and Hart, A. 2009 Helping children with complex needs bounce back: Resilient Therapy for parents and professionals. Jessica Kingsley: London ISBN 978-1-84310-948-8

Hart, A., Maddison, E., and Wolff, D.(eds) 2007 Community-university partnerships in practice. Niace:Leicester ISBN 978-1-86201-317-9

Hart, A. and Blincow, D. with Thomas, H. 2007 Resilient Therapy with children and families. Brunner Routledge: London ISBN 978-0-415-40384-9

Personal profile: http://www.brighton.ac.uk/snm/contact/details.php?uid=ah111

Angie Hart

To cite:

MLA format

Hart, Angie, "Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Broker through partnership working." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 10, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/33ZW1t

APA format

Hart, A. Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Broker through partnership working. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/33ZW1t]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core

2009-11-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Mobilization is a big part of my work. I don’t think of it however, as a separate piece. Since 2001, I have served as the Executive Director of an applied research centre – the Centre for Families, Work & Well-being at the University of Guelph (www.worklifecanada.ca). We do most of our work in collaboration with organizations with identified research needs. Knowledge brokering, exchange and translation are simply essential to my job.

Our focus has a deep resonance with people’s lived experience. We have the opportunity to talk about practical problems that occur in all of our lives but that show up in a myriad of ways for each of us. The popular press uses “work-family balance” as a handle for some of this, but I would ask that we shift to thinking about caring and working in webs and networks. This often leads to contradictions in relationships - as they occur in different contexts rather than as a simple set of scales to be tipped.

My starting point in working with community organizations or individuals is not to produce documents that follow social marketing guidelines. We don’t start from the concept of getting messages across in the right way to the right audience and developing that sort of logical framework to rationalize all the work –although, there are lots of good folks doing that kind of work, many resources available and it is great to have people doing those things as part of our broader team. My work is to bring together “those audiences” as players in the research process at the beginning rather than only as end users. This is a deliberate attempt to confuse the distinction between evidence based practice and practice based evidence. We just don’t deliver but also respond when some of those “audiences” approach the university.

For me, the “broker” role is both being an architect and a facilitator. Following a route of devising and supporting large complex research partnerships like the Father Involvement Research Alliance or the Rural Women Making Change Alliance I tend to think of the structure of the problem and then weave in the content. I try to support careful thinking about who from the academy or community should be invited and what role we will all play at a table responding to community research needs.

These considerations change not only the research questions, the way those questions will be “operationalised”, and the “sensibility” or ideological foundation demonstrated through the assumptions of the research (no objectivity claims from me), but also the way that new knowledge will be generated and will flow across systems.

Having policy makers, community people and university researchers eat at the same table means that whether you like it or not, word will get out. Part of the discovery process is how to harness the flow that is already there. This is a thinking process that is much different than deciding which evidence based practice will be delivered to those waiting for it. We focus instead on sharing ideas, coming to agreements and principles of working together, and have excellent conversations to both support the work as well as produce good outcomes.

Facilitation is critical – at the beginning, the middle and the end – managing the tensions that arise and structuring or restructuring so that people can do the good work they want to do. Conceptualizing, carrying out and moving research results to practice is an art when done in collaboration. The closer you are to how the research itself is (or was) conceptualized (the more you expand your brain to understand the research or practice area if not your own) the better the mobilization efforts will be. From this you will be able to recognize that those unexpected challenging moments are really opportunities to push the work forward. To summarize, my best work includes constant learning, good conversations, and occasionally failing but always with really good food.

Linda Hawkins

To cite:

MLA format
Hawkins, Linda, "Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 9, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/3ZxixJ

APA format
Hawkins, L. Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/3ZxixJ]

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

Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate

2009-11-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

Editor’s Note: Today, I posted a link to the National Post article by MP Steven Fletcher's thoughtful piece on Bill C-384 on legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada http://bit.ly/3fu6th This is Knowledge Mobilization Works Senior Fellow, Daryl Rock’s response.

I do have my own thoughts on euthanasia…based on my education, understanding of human nature and my own personal experience. Like Steven, before my injury I was young, athletic, had the world by the tail. And then I broke my neck! And like Steven, had 2 collapsed lungs, a broken neck, and could not move a muscle for a long time after my injury… and that is where our similarity of experience and also thoughts on this issue diverge (although interestingly, not completely) and so I want to be very clear that I value Steven’s points and more important, commend him for expressing them in such a public forum.

For me, the problem with the current debate on euthanasia, in the USA and Canada is it is always framed in dealing with a very small portion of the population: terminal illness, ongoing pain or severe disability... and it paints people in these circumstances as having such poor quality of life that the "were I in their shoes" mentality that exists in these situations would lead many folk to say, “I'd want to kill myself, so surely these folk want to as well”. In short their perceptions of the quality of life of someone in these circumstances leads them an those around them, to think, and act, in a manner they consider “humane” when in fact it is more likely their fear or lack of understanding of the unknown that motivates them.

But what happens when we change the focus of debate? Let’s move away from “euthanasia for a select portion of our society…the poor hopeless ones” and frame the debate more broadly and in so doing, more objectively – about the merit and value of euthanasia, as an option for anyone! Many people who attempt to commit suicide do it poorly because of fear, nervousness, lack of skill, whatever, shouldn’t these people be allowed access to professional quality life ending techniques? In short, don't make it about disability or illness, that just paints disabled and ill people in the traditional "poor them" light. Rather, if you are going to have a debate about euthanasia - have a real one...like abortion why not open euthanasia clinics around the country so that anyone, disabled, ill, bored, angry, unemployed, broke, etc...has the choice of whether or not to kill themselves with help. Keep the same criteria as is in the current proposed legislation: sound mind, 2 interviews, whatever, (but exclude the requirement to be terminally ill or severely disabled) … then, if “joe blow” wants to pop off, let him! I think we all know how short this debate would be!

Focusing the debate of euthanasia only on the terminally ill, severely disabled and those with chronic pain passes a quality of life judgement and in fact cheapens the life of a person living with these conditions. More important, it skews the debate into a more “politically correct” area…after all we are talking about those who can’t help themselves. As I said above, I suspect that if the debate was simply about the general idea of euthanasia for anyone, there would be a huge backlash and the debate would be quickly snuffed out because as a society of evolved human beings, we value life, or at least the life of healthy, well adjusted individuals…

Even worse, by focusing it on the ill, disabled or those in chronic pain, we are simply reinforcing the negative stereotypes of people living with these conditions and continues to create a dual class society where disabled and ill are seen as at best pity objects and at worst, burdens to be done away with...

In my view Steven missed an opportunity to put the issue in its proper light. From what I read the current debate really isn’t about right to live or die with dignity, it is about peoples perceptions of the value of those living with conditions they cannot imagine how to cope with... as I will explain below (and where I do agree with Steven), if a person, any person be they physically disabled or emotionally disabled, is given hope and a reason to live, only those with fundamental mental health conditions will chose the death option…

I do not believe the current debate is doing justice to either the issue of euthanasia or to the value of dignity for all…specifically the value we place on human contribution to society or, and here I again agree with Steven, the debate about effective supports to ensure hope and something to live for options are available to everyone...

So, if we have to focus on discussing euthanasia for only this small segment of society (which I find distasteful and therefore hesitate to do), what are my thoughts? Not surprisingly I believe the debate has to fully include the second element of Steven’s article, that is to say the provision of hope and more important – a reason for living. I believe that, when a person has no hope they will often consider death (as he might have when he first injured himself). But when a person, no matter how ill, or in pain, or disabled has hope (and respect, and the ability to live in some sort of dignified way, and a purpose) then the issue of choosing to die becomes less of a one sided option. Further, research shows that if you constantly bombard someone with an image of themselves, either positive or negative, it only takes a very short while (a couple hours in the case of the research on young students – the blue eye vs. brown eye “smart kids” experiment of the 1950s) before they begin to take that opinion as fact… thus the doom and gloom of those around a person will often and quickly lead to their feeling doom and gloom.

We also know that life experiences, culture and background will play a significant role in how each of us reacts to this type of situation. In many cases not only will someone severely disabled, or terminally ill, or in chronic pain want to kill themselves, but there are likely many "professionals" and "loved ones" around them who would support this decision because if they were in the similar situation, they’d want to too! Although I do not know for sure, I believe it highly likely that, had there been supported suicide when Steven was immediately injured and when he had no hope, then we'd have one less MP. And yet today, with hope, and the proper supports, Steven is a hugely contributing member of our society.

I have many friends without disabilities who do not or can not or will not see the distinction between euthanasia for all and euthanasia for the disabled and dying as an artificial one. This inability to see the difference reflects to me, an inability to fully appreciate the potential quality of life someone living with one of these conditions can have, and as important, their potential contribution to their family and to society…

At the end of the day, where do I stand (metaphorically)? I believe people should fundamentally have the right to choose, thus I fully support euthanasia, provided people are given valid choices and only IF we decide through public discourse, that euthanasia is an acceptable service that should be available to all of society. In that way people living with these conditions are not marginalized and can access the service just as readily and as anyone else…that, to me, is treating all people fairly, providing full access and equal opportunity to all citizens.

In closing I have to say this is not an easy issue to deal with and there are probably many more opinions than there are options. And to be clear I am glad I do not have to make the very tough decision now in front of the House… whatever the outcome, continued, thoughtful, honest debate, eschewed of the cloak of political correctness, is a healthy way to continue this dialogue.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format
Rock, Daryl, "Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 2, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/4GceHA

APA format
Rock, D. Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/4GceHA]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent

2009-10-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

I’m a knowledge mobilization manager. Not your everyday run-of-the-mill job. My mother never understands what “I do”. It’s not like she can tell her friends I paint, build houses, or pave highways. “So what does your son do?” (Cough). “Well…he mobilizes knowledge….(cough)” (Pause.) (Awkward Moment of Silence.) “He does what to knowledge!!!”

What does it say about our society when no one understands what you do? What does it say about you?

Its kind-of a funny job title but I get it. I finally get what it means. After 4 years mobilizing knowledge I finally understand what it means to share academic knowledge for the betterment of society. It really has a beautiful underpinning doesn’t it? To share knowledge for the betterment of society. For a better society. To better society. God knows, there are enough problems out there to fix! Homelessness, poverty, violence against women, clean drinking water, HIV, cancer, name your poison. I believe academia is aptly placed to fix those problems. The brightest minds. The Aristotelian children. The onions in the caramelized onion soup (?!). I believe we need knowledge mobilization managers to take that knowledge and put it to work.

For four years I have been working to bring the knowledge of Memorial University of Newfoundland to the people of this great province, and back from the people to the experts. The two-way flow of knowledge, in a reflective circle, to build new and better knowledge. To do what we talk about in theory – creating processes to position academic knowledge to have impact. Putting Memorial’s knowledge to work. At The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development where I work, we stand on the shoulder of a giant…Dr. Leslie Harris, who stood for all that was good. Dr. Harris was a dazzling writer, blessed with exquisite penmanship. He also had a heart for Newfoundland and Labrador, and as former President of Memorial University, did everything in his power to make the University a change agent. Of all the great things the Harris Centre has done (and we have done tons of great things, informing policy, helping rural communities, changing attitudes, building research programs – come see more at www.mun.ca/harriscentre), we are at our best when we subtly (but effectively) challenge the paradigm. When we force the populous to think in different ways. In fact, as Aristotle said, we all have an obligation to contribute to the state (our chosen society). I believe the Harris Centre is leading a modern day knowledge renaissance, awakening people’s conscience to reflect on the state, and their place in it. To understand what it is to be a citizen in a weird democracy, that often cares more about power than dialogue. To unlock citizenship. (I love the words change agent – there rests the punch in KMb)
.
So now in its fifth year, the Harris Centre reaches two roads diverged in a yellow wood. On one road is the blazed path of great things we have accomplished (look no further than www.yaffle.ca - a one of a kind research search engine), on the other is the wild, unbeaten trail ahead. There is so much left to do. So much knowledge to position. I best leave this blog in the hands of Dr. Harris who programs our GPS for the unbeaten path:

“Our history shows us that we are survivors. But, as we think of creating the New Jerusalem for our children, and our children’s children, we must be clear that mere physical survival is not enough…what is more to the point, as we take command of our own economic and social destiny, we must also ensure the survival of civility and of strong cultural traditions that inform a distinct identity; the survival of neighbourliness and of a caring and sharing society; the survival of shared community values of hardihood, and honesty, and independence and hard work; and, the survival of what is a very special Newfoundland characteristic, the ability, even in the hardest of times, to see the funny side of life, and to be ever ready to take up the arms of humour against a sea of troubles…”

There lies the greatest insight of all! Knowledge mobilization (solving all the worlds problems) is serious business. But, relationships between academics and community leaders are not only built on knowledge, they are built on the subtleties of laughter! “But of all the elements that contribute to the warm atmosphere of a good relationship, there is one that seldom gets translated into advice or even therapy, yet is something that everyone desires and most people would like more of: Laughter.” (Marano, 2003).

David Yetman

Photo was taken at UBC by Phillip Jeffrey @NCIE

To cite:

MLA format
Yetman, David, "Knowledge broker stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 30, 2009. Accessed (enter date).
http://bit.ly/4zXoEi

APA format
Yetman, D. Knowledge broker stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/4zXoEi]

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

Knowledge Broker Stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years

2009-10-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

I first told my story (at least my story to date) in a presentation for KMbW in February 2009. I graduated with my PhD in 1991 coming off a Medical Research Council doctoral scholarship at $15,000 per year (I have no idea how I managed to buy the beer I did – probably thanks to Mom). I identified and isolated a protein derived from insect blood that killed bacteria and (presumably) helped the bugs get better after they get a bacterial infection.

Meandered through a post-doctoral fellowship working in HIV/AIDS, and finally left the lab to join technology transfer, where I was brokering relationships between university researchers and industry around intellectual property (kind of but not quite like knowledge mobilization.

Continuing in this line of business, I worked at the Canadian Arthritis Network, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research increasingly engaged in brokering relationships in and around academic research. I landed at York University as Director of the Office of Research Services (now Research Services & Knowledge Exchange) running the grants and contracts for the university which included a small but active technology transfer operation.

It was at York that we implemented knowledge mobilization as a service to faculty. We conceived it first as non-monetary technology transfer for the social sciences and humanities but quickly realized that the unilateral “university push” of technology transfer was only part of the knowledge mobilization story. We developed methods of “user pull”, knowledge exchange and - what I feel is most important - the co-production of knowledge between researchers and decision makers. These activities are all built upon the knowledge broker who is the heart of the knowledge mobilization unit.

I’ve worked with many knowledge brokers and still don’t know one when I see one. I’m an immunologist – does that make me a good broker? I’ve seen nurses, epidemiologists, librarians, psychologists, literacy practitioners, physicists, evaluators, journalists, poets, political scientists, social workers and anthropologists acting as knowledge brokers. I’ve even seen a flight attendant (formerly trained as a priest) learn the principles of knowledge mobilization. What links all these knowledge brokers?

Maybe we’re all wired for empathy – seeing both sides of a question or a situation. Maybe we’re all just smart enough to learn to talk less and listen more.

We stand between two worlds: the world of research and action; the world of science and politics. We become boundary objects spanning boundaries and mediating relationships that enable research and knowledge to matter.

Some might accuse us of multiple personalities, but that’s a different interpretation!

We have some theory to back up our practice and we have a growing number of tools as our different knowledge broker practices link up in networks like the KTE Community of Practice or ResearchImpact - which now welcomes knowledge brokers from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Saskatchewan and University of Victoria. I travel across Canada presenting our work. We have begun to publish and are active in social media with an active blog and a twitter feed and videos posted on our website. We are part of a profession beginning to grow.

What have I learned on this journey from “broke to broker”?

[1] What we’re doing isn’t new, but we have refined and networked a practice that has happened ad hoc and haphazardly

[2] There are lots of us, but we are isolated in our own disciplines – we need some transdisciplinary space so that brokers in environmental policy can speak to those working in health services, education, immigration & settlement…

[3] Many different paths can lead to practice, but a little study along the way doesn’t hurt

[4] Be open to new people, new ideas and new ways of knowing and doing. You can’t own or control it – share your slice of the knowledge mobilization pie.

Visit David and ResearchImpact at:

dphipps@yorku.ca
www.researchimpact.ca
www.researchimpact.wordpress.com
www.twitter.com/researchimpact

To cite:

MLA format
Phipps, David, "Knowledge broker stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 24, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/1VQpLs

APA format
Phipps, D. Knowledge broker stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/1VQpLs]

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

Research Tool KIts

2009-10-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

This update comes from Community Campus Partnerships for Health. At first glance, this appears to be an important source of tools and resources. Although it is written for work in health, many of the components look like they could be adapted to other areas of work:

Group Health Research Institute and its partners - the University of Washington, Institute of Translational Health Sciences, Duke Translational Medicine Institute, and Wayne State University - have developed a new website to help researchers create and sustain successful multisite research collaborations, including those involving community-academic partnerships. The project team created the site, www.researchtoolkit.org, to enhance the efficiency of research from start to finish, including developing research networks, launching and managing projects, and sharing study results or other products such as data sets, tools, and training resources.

The website was developed as part of a project known as PRIMER, or Partnership-driven Resources to IMprove and Enhance Research. PRIMER was awarded to the Institute for Translational Health Sciences (ITHS) at the University of Washington by the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health. Read the complete press release at:
http://www.grouphealthresearch.org/newsroom/newsrel/2009/091015.html

Knowledge Broker Stories: Work history taking tool by Hal De Lair

2009-10-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

My story begins in 2003, when I took on a new and innovative role at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) as Director of the Ontario Occupational Health Services Network (OOHSN). The central aim of the Network was to link occupational medicine expertise to the front line of health care, particularly primary care delivery. With access to that expertise, it was believed that front line physicians and nurses would be supported in more effective treatment of occupational injury and illness.

Through a collaboration in 2002 between occupational medicine specialists at the WSIB and the Ministry of Labour, a work history-taking tool was created for use by primary care physicians. It consisted of a 4-page document covering various exposures and risks the working individual might encounter. The intent was for this information to be collected historically and stored in a patient's file. When that patient presented with symptoms that might be work related, this information would help inform treatment and secondary prevention options.

The problem was a very limited uptake of the work history-taking tool by physicians in Ontario. They did not have time to fill out a long form, especially one that only provided a potential to enhance treatment. Our approach to this problem was to create a pilot project in a primary care group practice for the purpose of understanding what might be possible and relevant to front line practitioners. That project was undertaken in a group practice of physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and social workers. As the knowledge broker, we supplied a student nurse practitioner with a background in occupational health nursing. She spent 2 days a week for a couple of months on site at the group practice. She also had the back-up and support of occupational medicine specialists through he Network.

The pilot was structured as a continuous improvement project, beginning with a file review to determine current practice in ascertaining work related health information. That process analysis, which is usually the first step in any continuous improvement model, led to a clear identification that occupational information was generally missing and that patient care could be compromised as a result. The problem however still remained that routinely filling out that work history form on thousands of patients was way beyond the capacity of the clinic.

The solution crafted by the pilot was to reduce the history taking down to 5 essential questions that could routinely be asked of every patient and entered into the electronic medical record. Those questions then became the basis for the current, universally available Work Health Exposure Screening Tool which you can find at http://www.stmichaelshospital.com/pdf/programs/occupationalhealth_work_exposure_screening.pdf This tool, or some variation of it, would go on to be applied in numerous, additional group practices in Community Health Centres and Family Health Teams in Ontario.

In subsequent years this approach of piloting new knowledge through local, continuous improvement projects, would extend to many areas. OOHSN conducted pilots in noise induced hearing loss and occupational asthma and dermatitis.

I'm sure this brief story will resonate with a lot of people involved in knowledge dissemination. It promotes the mechanism of continuous improvement projects to refine knowledge components, especially tools, to make them relevant and useful. This would mean that any KT strategy should include resources to engage target audiences in test pilots on uptake and outcomes.

Hal De Lair

To cite:

MLA format
De Lair, Hal, "Knowledge broker stories: Work history-taking tool." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 19, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/2eDwGX

APA format
De Lair, H. Knowledge broker stories: Work history-taking tool. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/2eDwGX]

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

The long road of Deliberative Processes

2009-10-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

I received the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP)’s newsletter this week. To my pleasant surprise, it contained some interesting pieces about deliberative processes. After downloading and reviewing the documents, (Deliberative Processes - Fact Sheet & Deliberative Processes - Inventory of Resources) I was further surprised that among the resources consulted was the work of Michel Callon and the Loka Institute.

What really surprises me however, is how cautious the Canadian government and its agencies are with broadly implementing and maintaining good deliberative practices. It already has good examples that can be scaled up.

In 1998, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) launched the Community University Research Alliance (CURA) program - based on deliberative processes found in Science Shops in Europe, Consensus Conferences in Denmark, Services aux Collectivites of Quebec universities, and a history of social enterprise dating back to the 1920s. It is a successful and standardized program in a portfolio of programs.

It influenced the Community Alliances for Health Research (CAHR) program at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in 1999. This program was considered transitional, was abandoned, and there is nothing of the type currently funded at CIHR. It also influenced the creation of the PICRI - Partenariat Institutions Citoyens pour la Recherche et pour l’Innovation initiated by the government of Ile de France. The PICRI program goes beyond where the CURA program initiated by bringing together a broader assortment of actors and interests in the deliberative processes associated with science and technology.

With regard to health and healthcare, the Community-Campus for Health Partnerships (CCPH) was founded in 1996. This growing “network of over 1,800 communities and campuses across North America and increasingly the world that are collaborating to promote health through service-learning, community-based participatory research, broad-based coalitions and other partnership strategies. These partnerships are powerful tools for improving higher education, civic engagement and the overall health of communities” has been led by Dr. Sarena Seifer and has been instrumental in bringing diverse people together to work through how to work together.

These are only a few of the examples of work that has been mobilizing community knowledge via deliberative process mechanisms for over the past decade plus.

I applaud the NCCHPP for producing these reports. I hope and desire that it promotes the methods described. It is long past due and as Ralph Klein, former Premier of Alberta, once said - “the role of a politician is to find the parade and get in front”. The parade of deliberation relating to health and healthcare is decades long. People of Canada, we need to tell our politicians that deliberative processes are not just good for democratic governance - they are the basis of democratic government. So who wants to get in front?

http://bit.ly/11u0xJ

To cite:

MLA format
Levesque, Peter, "The long road of deliberative processes." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 18, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/11u0xJ

APA format
Levesque, P. The long road of deliberative processes. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net (http://bit.ly/11u0xJ)

Monieson Centre Seminars: Dr. Waymond Rodgers

2009-10-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

The Monieson Centre (http://business.queensu.ca/moniesoncentre) is pleased to invite you to two seminars by Dr. Waymond Rodgers, University of California in Riverside, USA.

Date: October 21, 2009
Room: 403 Goodes Hall

SEMINAR ONE: WEDNESDAY, 12 NOON - 1PM

A MODEL OF THE TACIT KNOWLEDGE LIFECYCLE FOR DECISION-MAKING: FROM CREATION TO UTILIZATION
Abstract:
An important issue for firms is to make strategic decisions on the basis of organizational resources. Many of the criticisms directed towards traditional methods of capturing performance, productivity, and profitability are due to inadequate ways of identifying, measuring and valuing knowledge assets. This paper presents a comprehensive “knowledge process model” incorporating the resource-based literature from economics and knowledge-based literature from organization theory that provides a possible course of action for individuals/organizations to understand and explain knowledge flows' contributions to an organization.

SEMINAR TWO: WEDNESDAY, 1.30 - 2.30PM
MODELING THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE WITH A THROUGHPUT MODEL
Abstract:
Companies are becoming difficult to value reliably and accurately due to the economy becoming increasingly intangible. Many of the criticisms of traditional methods result from the inability to value knowledge assets (KA). Innovation and technology are influencing the complexity of production processes and products. Stock market valuations are frequently several times higher than book values. This gap is viewed as evidence that the effects of innovation and technology on KA are very important to corporate wealth. This paper incorporates the resource-based literature from economics and knowledge-based literature from organization theory, creating a comprehensive “knowledge process model” that constructs a possible course of action for information system designers and users of innovation and technology.

FURTHER INFORMATION:
Dr. Rodgers is travelling to Kingston from the University of California and we are holding these seminars back-to-back so that individuals have the opportunity to attend both seminars conveniently. Dr. Rodgers will also be pleased to meet with individual faculty, students, staff and visitors before and after the seminars. If you wish to set up an appointment, please mention this when you RSVP.

Biography:

Dr. Waymond Rodgers is a professor in the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California in Riverside. He has a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Southern California and a cognitive psychology postdoctorate from the University of Michigan. He is a Certified Public Accountant in California and Michigan. Dr. Rodgers’ accounting, banking and management expertise derives from his employment as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young. Also, he was a commercial loan officer for Union Bank and his portfolio included Fortune 500 companies. His primary research areas are auditing, commercial lending decisions, decision modeling, ethics, trust issues, intellectual capital, and knowledge management. Professor Rodgers has published in Management Science, Communications of the ACM, European Accounting Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Economic Psychology, and the Journal of the Association of Information Systems, among other journals. Finally, he is the recipient of major research grants from the Brazilian Research Foundation, Canada Research Foundation, Citibank, Ford Foundation, National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center and others.

Lunch will be provided. If you plan to attend one or both of these events, please RSVP to monieson@business.queensu.ca by Friday, 16th October.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Monieson Centre
Queen's School of Business, Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
monieson@business.queensu.ca
www.business.queensu.ca/knowledge

Knowledge Mobilization Works Update

2009-10-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

As with any consulting and research business, we have our ups and downs. This has been a challenging year but one that has forced me to be focused and a little brutal with some of my pet projects.

Here are links to some of the latest developments:

1) We had to pull the plug on Manifestation Journal. Despite some good intellectual support and lots of interest, it was just not possible to get funding to support the editorial and production functions.

2) Blog updates:

KMbW welcomes Dr. Howard Schachter

Resources from KMb Workshop at Queen’s

Time Costs: End of Manifestation Journal

10 Quotes on Failure

Scientist Knowledge Translation Training

My immersion into Web 2.0 – Jan Jablonski

Mobility Access Awareness Group - Lesley Strutt

KM Rap: Dr. David Phipps

3) Creation of a Reading List with Reviews - "These are books, articles, and papers that have influenced our thinking about knowledge mobilization. Please suggest other works that could benefit the community of thought and practice."

4) Continued participation in events, lots of presentations and workshops, and a few reports. All the resources are posted in the events section of the KMbW website.

5) More targeted service portfolio.

6) Reflection and reorientation of the Mobilizer Bootcamps. While these were successful events, the cost of delivering across the country without an institutional funder was not cost effective (read - it cost me a bundle). I am taking some time to work through the details and will relaunch the workshops in 2010 with partners. Likely to be delivered within a 400 km range of Ottawa - Quebec City - Montreal - Toronto - Sudbury - Sherbrooke - Albany ...

New KMb Videos on YouTube

2009-03-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that Knowledge Mobilization Works is launching a video series that may become a book on knowledge mobilization.

The first two are:

What is Knowledge Mobilization? A brief introduction.

Origin of Knowledge Mobilization

Please leave your comments, suggestions for topics that should be covered or if you would like to be interviewed for the series, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Peter

KMbW welcomes Jan Jablonski

2009-03-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that Jan Jablonski, a recent Queen’s University at Kingston graduate has joined Knowledge Mobilization Works as our first Knowledge Mobilization Projects Officer.

Jan will be working on projects that cover KMbW’s six streams of activity. He is currently developing background information on the Wiki 101 workshop we plan to launch in the Fall 2009.

Please welcome Jan to the KMb family.

Peter

Presentations from Leadership Event

2009-03-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from beautiful Victoria, British Columbia where KMbW hosted another successful Mobilizer Boot Camp. This one was on Leadership. A big thank you to Royal Roads University, especially Graham and Diane, who were very helpful in pulling the venue and catering together.

The presentations by Peter Levesque, Graham Dickson, Alan Breakspear, and Laura Milne have been posted on the Bootcamp page. (Resources for March Participants)

Thanks to all the participants for such incredible input and knowledge sharing.

Peter

Steve Kaufmann at 4th Mobilizer Boot Camp

2009-03-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

It is my pleasure to announce that Steve Kaufmann will be speaking at the 4th Mobilizer Boot Camp on Creativity & Experimentation for Knowledge Mobilization.

Steve Kaufmann is a former Canadian diplomat, who has had his own company in the international trade of forest products, KP Wood Ltd., for over 20 years. Steve is the founder and CEO of LingQ.com an online language learning system and Web 2.0 community. Steve speaks ten languages, having recently learned Russian at LingQ. Steve maintains a blog on language learning, and has written a book on language learning called The Linguist, A Language Learning Odyssey.

Sean Muir at 4th Mobilizer Boot Camp

2009-03-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

It is my pleasure to announce that Sean Muir will be speaking at the 4th Mobilizer Boot Camp on Creativity & Experimentation for Knowledge Mobilization.

Sean Muir is the founder and executive director of the Healthy Aboriginal Network. HAN creates comics and animated shorts on health and social issues for youth. Issues they have covered so far are suicide prevention, gambling addiction, diabetes prevention, staying in school and child & youth mental health.

Job: Writer/Knowledge Transfer Specialist

2009-03-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

Position: Writer/Knowledge Transfer Specialist
Centre for Research on Inner City Health
Keenan Research Centre, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital

Part-Time, Contract: 60%-80% FTE (negotiable)
Salary: Commensurate with experience
Contract Period: April 20, 2009-May 1, 2010
Deadline to Apply: March 20, 2009

Position: Reporting to the Director, Knowledge Transfer and Exchange, the Writer/Knowledge
Exchange Specialist will support and implement a range of activities in fulfillment of CRICH’s
knowledge transfer goals and objectives. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to: writing research synopses and summaries for non-academic target users; communicating CRICH’s vision, mission; coordinating KT events and symposia; utilization of new media for communication;stakeholder relations (government, community, media, public).

Knowledge Required: at least two of the following:
- social disadvantage/poverty/urban health issues;
- health services research/public health research
- principles of business writing, technical writing, writing for media
- knowledge transfer principles

Skills and Experience: superior public communication/marketing skills (verbal, written), project management expertise, experience in technical writing/writing for government and other nonacademic audiences; web content management; government relations or community engagement experience; capacity to learn new issues quickly.

About KT at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health
Most issues studied at CRICH span multiple policy sectors and are relevant to diverse
stakeholders. Our KT challenge is to identify pathways and evidence-based interventions linking health care, housing, social services, immigration, education, corrections, and other sectors. To ensure that our research is relevant, timely, and useful, we work in partnership with community agencies, public policy organizations, and decision-makers.

About the Centre for Research on Inner City Health
The Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH) at St. Michael’s Hospital is Canada’s only
hospital-based research organization focused on the health consequences of urban life and social inequality. Across a range of health conditions and in spite of universal health care policies, lower income populations are at greatest risk of illness and experience greatest unmet need for health care services. CRICH generates scientific evidence and tools to illuminate health barriers and reduce health disparities. Our research priorities include: health-promoting neighbourhoods, health effects of homelessness and underhousing; and evaluating health services for marginalized groups. Genuinely transdisciplinary, CRICH scientific strengths include economics, ethics, geography and GIS, health services research, medicine, psychology, and psychiatry, and social epidemiology. One third of CRICH faculty members are front-line physicians at St. Michael’s Hospital, providing a direct link between population research and patient care. CRICH is affiliated with the University of Toronto and is part of the Keenan Research Centre in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital. CRICH is supported by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to conduct research to help ensure that Ontarians have equitable access to care services, regardless of who they are, where they live, or what they own.

Applications for this position should include a cover letter, resume, and portfolio of three writing samples that demonstrate your capacity to convey research evidence to non-academic audience.

Submit your application to:
Kelly Murphy
Director, Knowledge Transfer and Partnerships
Centre for Research on Inner City Health
Keenan Research Centre
Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute
St. Michael’s Hospital
30 Bond Street
Toronto ON
M5B 1W8
murphyke@smh.toronto.on.ca

Creating Knowledge Mobilization Curriculum

2009-03-04T10:27:00.000-08:00

Last month, during the first Mobilizer Boot Camp in Ottawa, several participants suggested the need for courses in knowledge mobilization theory, history, practice, and methods. Following up on these suggestions, I began putting together the beginning elements for a process to develop this curriculum.

Today, I wrote a relatively lengthy reply to one potential funder. I thought this might be useful to the KMb community, as I think it speaks to the ethic and philosophy needed to create a knowledge mobilization community in Canada and elsewhere. I am not saying who the funder is to protect their decision-making process.

Thank you very much for your reply to the request sent on February 3, 2009. The questions asked by the KM Committee are very pertinent. I trust that the information provided below is helpful to answering these questions.

Background:

Knowledge Mobilization Works launched a series of workshops this year that focus on particular aspects of knowledge mobilization practice, policy, administration, and research. The themes include such topics as: incentives & infrastructure, human resources, leadership, creativity, management & governance as well as lessons learned in key sectors of our society such as health, education, social services, and business. The dual goal of this series is to increase our collective knowledge about knowledge mobilization and to build a community of practice of those involved in knowledge mobilization. These workshops are self-funded through participants’ fees and profits are re-invested in developing the series. This is a challenging model to work with but one that we felt was worth the risk.

The first two workshops in Ottawa and Toronto have been well attended and considered successful by most participants. In an effort to remain transparent and to “walk the talk”, we post the results of each work on the KMbW website. We also distribute the results to members of the KMb discussion group hosted on Google. Transparency of methods and discussion of results is the cornerstone of good knowledge mobilization practice.

The idea of developing a KMb Curriculum emerged from participants at both workshops. During the breaks and networking periods, several individuals approached me as the facilitator and suggested that despite having titles that included knowledge mobilization/knowledge transfer/knowledge exchange, they felt that they did not understand the basics and could really use a course (or two) to build their skills. When I proposed this to the full group, there was significant positive response.

Based on this reaction, I invited a series of senior KMb practitioners from across the country to come together to develop the curriculum for two courses on knowledge mobilization currently described as: KMb101 – Theory and History & KMb 201 – Methods and Practice.

The reaction from practitioners was positive. There was general agreement that this is a useful project to become involved in and that given the complexity of knowledge mobilization, it makes sense to work collectively on designing a curriculum that would be widely available.

What is the KM curriculum?

The core content modules of the curriculum will be developed at a 2-day face-to-face meeting at the University of Guelph. The Executive Director of the Centre for Families, Work & Well-Being, Linda Hawkins has offered to host the meeting. The Associate Director Teaching Support Services at the University of Guelph, Peter Wolf, has agreed to help develop the content into useful modules.

The goal is to produce the outline and core content modules for the two courses KMb101 – Theory and History & KMb 201 – Methods and Practice.

The ongoing development of this content will be facilitated using a Web 2.0 application called a wiki. Knowledge Mobilization Works has purchased a license from a leading software company (http://pbwiki.com) for an unlimited number of users in a publicly accessible site.

A stub (initial elements) for the KMB101 course has been created at the following link:
https://kmbw.pbwiki.com/KMb-101 Making the content of courses publicly available has been pioneered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through their open courseware site: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

We anticipate that as the curriculum matures, there will be additional modules created that will correspond directly to particular contextual needs such as those with brain injuries, physical differences of abilities, special educational needs, or particular cultural perspectives. This is one of the strongest arguments for pursuing a collective development strategy. Including a range of people in the process will also include their specific needs in the development of the curriculum.

The goal is to provide the content free of charge to be used in seminars and workshops across Ontario, Canada and elsewhere. The understanding of users is that by accessing and using this content, they are engaging with a community of practitioners and will also share their learning from their use of the content.

Who will be targeted in Ontario to take part in this course?

Currently we are targeting individuals and institutions that have an intermediary or brokering role between research and practice, policy, produce & process development. One of the key lessons learned during my past 7 years of explicitly defined Knowledge Mobilization practice (job title) is that the core audience for the development of knowledge mobilization skills is not researchers or policymakers themselves but those in positions as educators and influencers, synthesizers, fieldworkers, transfer & disseminators, and resource allocators. While researchers and policymakers may be interested and are not to be excluded, their core business is not knowledge mobilization itself but the production and utilization of knowledge. Knowledge mobilization is focused on making both these processes more effective and efficient.

We anticipate working with agencies and organizations such as the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation, Cancer Care Ontario, Centres and Institutes associated with Universities, Hospitals and Colleges, professional associations such as the Council of Ontario Directors of Education, and specific branches of the Ontario government with knowledge mobilization mandates such as Early Learning and Child Development Branch of the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.

It is important to mention that while Knowledge Mobilization Works will be delivering seminars and workshops based on this curriculum, it does not intend to hold the content strictly for itself. The content of all KMb courses developed will remain in the public domain to be accessed, shared, utilized, and contributed to by many interested parties. This is the model of collective creation that has allowed Linux to emerge as an operating system, Wikipedia to grow as a public encyclopedia, and Amazon to have 140,000 applications produced independently to build its distribution services.

Will there be a cost to join or is this anticipated to be provided free?

There is no cost to access and contribute to the curriculum content. The wiki requires that a participant create a username and password. The contributions of each participant are data based and subject to the ongoing discussion of the group – a form of ongoing peer-review.

The choice of charging a fee to participate in a course is the choice of whoever wishes to deliver the course. Universities and colleges charge tuition. Private companies charge a fee. Learning groups within professional associations may deliver the content for free.

On the other-hand, if a self-motivated learner wishes to access the curriculum on-line, s/he may do so at no charge.

Users agree that regardless of how the content is delivered, lessons learned, opportunities for new modules or courses, and new content elements will be shared with all users.

Are there other sponsors that have agreed to provide financial support or have been approached to do so?

At this point contributions have been in-kind or investments made by Knowledge Mobilization Works ($12,700 to date). We consider this to be an important project that has the potential to produce widespread benefits. As much as we directly benefit from this work, the complexity and need for effective and efficient knowledge mobilization is too big for one enterprise or sector to engage in alone. In our opinion, it is a collective work for collective benefit.

The Alberta Health Foundation for Medical Research has been approached and is supportive but feels that this project does not directly fit their mandate. They are willing to provide expertise and in-kind support for the development of the curriculum and wiki.

The Public Health Agency of Canada has been approached but no response has yet been received.

The Wellesley Institute Foundation rejected the request for support based on the economic downturn and current commitments.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has been approached but no final decision has been made.

York University is providing the services of their Director of Research Services, Dr, David Phipps, formerly the Director of Partnerships at CIHR.

The Canadian Centre for Elder Law at the University of British Columbia is providing the services of their Exective Director, Laura Watts.

The University of Guelph will host the face-to-face meeting, providing catering and meeting space. They are also providing professional services in curriculum development.

The Institut National pour la Recherche Scientifique in Montreal is providing a template for a graduate KMb course that is currently delivered to students in French.

The Institute of Work and Health will provide undetermined in-kind services but is unable to contribute financially due to a cut in their budget. They remain however, quite supportive.

There has also been interest from other parties who are willing to support delegates attending the meeting in Guelph as well as participating in the ongoing development online.

I am pleased that you were interested in learning more about this project. I hope that this information provides you with a better understanding of what we are trying to do.

Your offer of lunch in Toronto is appreciated and I will take you up on it. The next time that I am heading to Toronto, I will let you know.

If there is anything else that you or the KM Committee needs to know, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.

The Crystal Ball?

2006-07-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

July 5, 2006
David Leonhardt

The Internet Knows What You'll Do Next

A FEW years back, a technology writer named John Battelle began talking about how the Internet had made it possible to predict the future. When people went to the home page of Google or Yahoo and entered a few words into a search engine, what they were really doing, he realized, was announcing their intentions.

They typed in "Alaskan cruise" because they were thinking about taking one or "baby names" because they were planning on needing one. If somebody were to add up all this information, it would produce a pretty good notion of where the world was headed, of what was about to get hot and what was going out of style.

Mr. Battelle, a founder of Wired magazine and the Industry Standard, wasn't the first person to figure this out. But he did find a way to describe the digital crystal ball better than anyone else had. He called it "the database of intentions."

The collective history of Web searches, he wrote on his blog in late 2003, was "a place holder for the intentions of humankind — a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, subpoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends."

"Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward," he wrote. It was a nice idea, but for most of us it was just an abstraction. The search companies did offer glimpses into the data with bare-bones (and sanitized) rankings of the most popular search terms, and Yahoo sold more detailed information to advertisers who wanted to do a better job of selling their products online. But there was no way for most people to dig into the data themselves.

A few weeks ago, Google took a big step toward changing this — toward making the database of intentions visible to the world — by creating a product called Google Trends. It allows you to check the relative popularity of any search term, to look at how it has changed over the last couple years and to see the cities where the term is most popular. And it's totally addictive.

YOU can see, for example, that the volume of Google searches would have done an excellent job predicting this year's "American Idol," with Taylor Hicks (the champion) being searched more often than Katharine McPhee (second place), who in turn was searched more often than Elliot Yamin (third place). Then you can compare Hillary Clinton and Al Gore and discover that she was more popular than he for almost all of the last two years, until he surged past her in April and stayed there.

Thanks to Google Trends, the mayor of Elmhurst, Ill., a Chicago suburb, has had to explain why his city devotes more of its Web searches to "sex" than any other in the United States (because it doesn't have strip clubs or pornography shops, he gamely told The Chicago Sun-Times). On Mr. Battelle's blog, somebody claiming to own an apparel store posted a message saying that it was stocking less Von Dutch clothing and more Ed Hardy because of recent search trends.(A disclosure: The New York Times Company owns a stake in Mr. Battelle's latest Internet company, Federated Media Publishing.)

It's the connection to marketing that turns the database of intentions from a curiosity into a real economic phenomenon. For now, Google Trends is still a blunt tool. It shows only graphs, not actual numbers, and its data is always about a month out of date. The company will never fully pull back the curtain, I'm sure, because the data is a valuable competitive tool that helps Google decide which online ads should appear at the top of your computer screen, among other things. .

But Google does plan to keep adding to Trends, and other companies will probably come up with their own versions as well. Already, more than a million analyses are being done some days on Google Trends, said Marissa Mayer, the vice president for search at Google.

When these tools get good enough, you can see how the business of marketing may start to change. As soon as a company begins an advertising campaign, it will be able to get feedback from an enormous online focus group and then tweak its message accordingly.

I've found Pepsi's recent Super Bowl commercials — the ones centered around P. Diddy — to be nearly devoid of wit, but that just shows you how good my marketing instincts are. As it turns out, the only recent times that Pepsi has been a more popular search term in this country than Coke have been right after a Super Bowl. This year's well-reviewed Burger King paean to Busby Berkeley, on the other hand, barely moved the needle inside the database of intentions.

Hal R. Varian, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who advises Google, predicts that online metrics like this one have put Madison Avenue on the verge of a quantitative revolution, similar to the one Wall Street went through in the 1970's when it began parsing market data much more finely. "People have hunches, people have prejudices, people have ideas," said Mr. Varian, who also writes for this newspaper about once a month. "Once you have data, you can test them out and make informed decisions going forward."

There are certainly limitations to this kind of analysis. It's most telling for products that are bought, or at least researched, online, a category that does not include Coke, Pepsi or Whoppers. And even with clothing or cars, interest doesn't always translate into sales. But there is no such thing as a perfect yardstick in marketing, and the database of intentions clearly offers something new.

In the 19th century, a government engineer whose work became the seed of I.B.M. designed a punch-card machine that allowed for a mechanically run Census, which eventually told companies who their customers were. The 20th century brought public opinion polls that showed what those customers were thinking. This century's great technology can give companies, and anyone else, a window into what people are actually doing, in real time or even ahead of time.

You might find that a little creepy, but I bet that you'll also check it out sometime.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

Because the public doesn't matter or because they suck at it?

2006-07-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

What is the reason for the following:

http://www.royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=4861

Latest press releases

Research pressure in universities is barrier to scientists communicating work to public
29 Jun 2006

A 'research driven' culture in British universities is a key barrier to scientists communicating their work with the public according to a major study published today (Thursday 29 June 2006) by the Royal Society , with the support of Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust.

According to the scientists surveyed for the report the pressure to publish research, attract funding to their departments and build careers on 'hard research' means public engagement work, such as debates, dialogues or exhibitions, media appearances or outreach activities with schools, is not a priority. The need to spend more time on research was the top reason, cited by 64 per cent of respondents, stopping scientists getting more engaged with science communication work.

Scientists highlighted that public engagement activities were seen by colleagues as being bad for their careers. Some said that it was seen as being done by those who were 'not good enough' for an academic career, that it was 'light' or 'fluffy' and risked reinforcing negative stereotypes for women involved in these activities.

However, in spite of this, 45 per cent of respondents said that they would like to spend more time engaging with the non-specialist public about science. 74 per cent of those surveyed reported that they have taken part in at least one science communication or public engagement activity in the past 12 months.

Sir David Wallace, vice president of the Royal Society, who chaired the study's consultative group, said: "It is encouraging that so many scientists have, despite all the perceived barriers, taken part in science communication activities. The report shows that we need to find ways to make it easier for scientists to engage in a genuine dialogue with the public so that those outside of the scientific community can better understand, support, and indeed challenge, the science that is being undertaken in our universities while, at the same time, helping scientists understand public interests and concerns. This must clearly happen in the context of allowing scientists to carry on conducting excellent research while progressing their careers. And we recognise that it is not desirable to require all scientists to undertake public engagement work.

"While the report identified that research pressures are a factor in discouraging involvement with science communication activities we should be careful not to paint an overly simplistic picture of cause and effect'. We need to see the profile of this kind of work being raised within departments so that it is seen as a more integral part of a well rounded career."

The study found that generally, younger researchers, those in departments rated 5*' by the RAE, and those in research-only appointments, undertook less public engagement activity compared with senior researchers, those in departments rated 1-5 under the RAE and those in research and teaching positions.

In general, respondents to the survey felt that their participation in science communication activities would be increased more through rewards to their departments rather than to themselves as individuals. 81 per cent of scientists said bringing more money into their departments would be a key incentive. And 56 per cent of respondents said that awards or prizes for departments were important, in contrast to 39 per cent who identified awards for individuals as being important. Additionally, 76 per cent said they would be encouraged to get more involved if it helped their careers.

The aim of the study was to provide evidence for funding organisations, universities and other research institutions on which they can base a workable system to reward scientists for their efforts to become involved with public engagement activities. It involved a web-survey of 1485 research scientists in higher education institutions and 41 more detailed interviews with a cross section of respondents and other key players within science policy and science communication such as social scientists, senior managers, funders and science communicators .

Professor Colin Blakemore, speaking on behalf of Research Councils UK, said "Spreading the word about the joys and challenges of science to the public and the media is central to what we do. This report shows that we still have to convince more scientists of the importance of speaking out about their work. Public engagement is a vital part of the research process - and this report will play a crucial role in implementing the research councils' Science in Society strategy.

"Communication is particularly important in areas of practical and ethical concern about the applications of science. With rapid advances in scientific research, all scientists have to find opportunities to increase public awareness and public involvement because we cannot take public support for granted. Public engagement takes time and effort, but it helps scientists to see their own research in a broader context as well as helping to build public confidence and trust, which are essential for scientific progress.

"Through RCUK, we're encouraging scientists to begin communication work early in their careers. Through Researchers in Residence and the Perspectives poster competition, the Research Councils are providing the extra support and encouragement that young researchers need."

Clare Matterson, Wellcome Trust Director of Medicine, Society and History comments: "The public has a clear appetite for science, and this survey shows that scientists are responding well to this by increasing the amount of time they dedicate to engage directly with the public. We seem to be going in the right direction - but we cannot be complacent. The Wellcome Trust is committed to public engagement and continues to explore new and innovative ways to support dialogue between scientists and the public to foster mutual respect, understanding and trust."

Dr Rama Thirunamachandran, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, said: This important study indicates a considerable degree of willingness by scientists to spend more time engaging with the non-specialist public given the right incentives. We are using the results of the study to inform a co-ordinated approach with the Research Councils and other funders to provide better recognition, support and reward for public engagement activities in universities and colleges. In developing this approach we will wish to ensure that all subjects and a wide range of activities including teaching and research, are represented.'

© Royal Society copyright 2006

2006-07-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

Dr. Ian D. Graham appointed Vice-President of Knowledge Translation at CIHR

OTTAWA, June 29 /CNW Telbec/ - Dr. Alan Bernstein, President of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), announced today the appointment of Dr. Ian D. Graham as incoming Vice-President of Knowledge Translation at CIHR. This appointment is effective July 10, 2006.

"Dr. Graham is a welcome addition to the CIHR executive team," said Dr. Bernstein. "His accomplishments in knowledge translation will help CIHR ensure that it is fulfilling its mandate in this important area."

Dr. Graham is Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, University of Ottawa and Senior Social Scientist and Associate Director of the Clinical Epidemiology Program of the Ottawa Health Research Institute. He holds cross-appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology & Community Medicine and is an adjunct professor in the School of Nursing at Queen's University. Dr. Graham obtained a PhD in medical sociology from McGill University, a Master of Arts degree in sociology from the University of Victoria, and a Bachelor of Arts degree with 1st class honours in sociology from McGill University.

"I am thrilled to have the opportunity to serve the health research community and all Canadians by helping research evidence make its way into the health system," said Dr. Graham. "I look forward to working with colleagues in disciplines that span the breadth of health research. Together we can build on the tremendous progress CIHR has already made in the area of knowledge translation."

Dr. Graham's research has largely focused on knowledge translation (the process of research use) and conducting applied research on strategies to increase implementation of research findings and evidence-based practice. Specific projects have related to the adaptation, implementation, and quality appraisal of clinical practice guidelines, as well as the uptake of guidelines and decision support tools by practitioners.

Dr. Graham is also the author of over 140 articles in peer-reviewed literature and a book titled "Episiotomy: Challenging Obstetric Interventions."

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada's agency for health research. CIHR's mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to catalyze its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened Canadian health care system. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to close to 10,000 health researchers and trainees across Canada. www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca

Philosophy of Management?

2006-06-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

My friend and colleague, Nick Barrowman, recently shared an article with me. It is by Matthew Stewart, with the title of, "The Management Myth", published in The Atlantic Monthly. While there is little in the article that I found surprising or controversial, I really liked the following two quotes on page 86:

"...about 99 percent of all the management literature once you master this dialectic between rationalists and humanists. The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey, these are people we're talking about! And the debate goes on."

"...human beings have produced an astonishing wealth of creative expression on the topics of reason, passion, and living with other people. In books, poems, plays, music, works of art, and plain old graffiti, they have explored what it means to struggle against adversity, to apply their extraordinary faculty of reason to the world, and to confront the naked truth about what motivates their fellow human animals. These works are every bit as relevant to the dilemmas faced by managers in their quest to make the world a more productive place as any of the management literature."

Getting lost in the "proactive jungle"

2006-05-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

My colleague Paul McDowall sent this great cartoon of "Action Item" to me. I laughed so hard that it still hurts.

http://www.fatalexception.org/action_item.html

2006-05-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

Living Knowledge - Building Partnerships for Public Access to Research

Newsletter – May 2006

Table of Contents
· Science Shop Summerschool
· 3rd International Living Knowledge Conference
· ISSNET Reports
· Science Shops in Belgium
· Sustainability of Cotton
· International Science Shop Cooperation – Science education and careers call
· International Science Shop Cooperation – Science Shop call
· Problems of Sustainable Water Management in Berlin ...
· Towards a Framework of ‘Cooperative Research’
· Science Shops: New Flyer, EU Website and Brochure
· Living Knowledge Database
· FAQs on Science Shops
· The DOTIK Training School
· Participatory Methods Toolkit
· Conferences
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Science Shop Summerschool

A four day introduction in Science Shops
22-25 August 2006, Utrecht (the Netherlands), Registration is open!!

The Science Shop summerschool is a four day course. It will focus on the concept of Science Shops and community-based research in general. Experienced science shop staff will discuss operational options and good practices, but also barriers in running a science shop. Local contexts are very important factors for the success of a science shop. Therefore an active contributions of participants is essential in the discussions. Clear links will be made to the EC Science and Society policy and other activities to improve citizens access to, and participation in research. Examples of different Science Shop models will be given and visits to different type of Science Shops will be organised.

The summer school addresses to scientists, science communicators, community leaders, NGO representatives, graduate students, PhD students, and others who are interested in setting up a science shop or starting Community-Based Research projects. The course aims at introducing the operational options of Science Shops in order to support the establishment of community-based research organisations.

Deadline for registration is 1 July 2006. The fee of € 300,- includes course materials, Science Shop site visits and housing. Applications for scholarships are extended to 1 June 2006.

More information about the programme, housing, scholarships are available at www.livingknowledge.org or at the International Science Shop Contact Point (isso@bio.uu.nl), Utrecht University, Caspar de Bok, e-mail: C.F.M.deBok@uu.nl
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3rd International Living Knowledge Conference

30 August to 1 September 2007, Paris, France

At the beginning of February 2005 around 250 people from 30 countries all over the world participated in the 2nd ‚Living Knowledge‘ Conference in Seville, Spain. We can tell that there is a progress since this conference. There is a growing social demand in society for validation of existing knowledge and access to knowledge production and new Science Shops have emerged in different countries with a lot of enthusiasm.

The preparations for the 3rd Living Knowledge Conference now have started. This 3rd LK conference will be held in Paris, France, from August 30, 2007 until September 1, 2007. More details and requests for support will be announced on the Living Knowledge discussion list soon and will then also be available at the Living Knowledge website.

Printed copies of the Seville conference proceedings are still available. Please ask for a free copy by sending an e-mail to norbert.steinhaus@wilabonn.de or download the pdf-file at www.livingknowledge.org (follow reports-documentation-ISSNET).
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ISSNET Reports

The final version of the ISSNET WP4 report „Opportunities and challenges for transnational research co-operation“, and all other reports of the EC funded project ISSNET (Improving Science Shop Networking) are available online now. The pdf documents can be downloaded for free from the Living Knowledge website www.livingknowledge.org (see section News).
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Science Shops in Belgium

Thanks to the support of the Flemish authorities a network of university based Science Shops in Flanders has been created. The Belgian network of Science Shops consists of a central contact point, Wetenschapswinkel.be, and regional university based Science Shops: one at the Universiteit Antwerpen, one at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, one at the Universiteit Gent, one at the Universiteit Hasselt, one at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and one at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel.

The central contact point will be managed by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. One of the tasks of this central contact point is to create a database which consists all the Science Shop topics of Flanders. The main benefit of working with a central unit is that with a minimum of costs we try to give a maximum service to the non-profit organizations and to our new coming Science Shops.

The purpose of our Belgian university based Science Shops is to seek scientifically founded answers in response to a problem experienced by a civil society organization. These problems are presented by the regional Science Shops to senior students by way of dissertation research, assignments, training sessions and/or internships or to experts through workshops, research support and research supervision. The regional Science Shop employee acts as a mediator between the organization who ordered the research, the student researcher and/or the expert.

Central support unit Science Shops Belgium Sofie Van Den Bossche, T +32 (0)2 629 22 24

info@wetenschapswinkel.be , www.scienceshops.be.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department R&D, Science Communication Office, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
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Sustainability of cotton

On April 10 the Science Shop of Wageningen UR published a report about the sustainability of cotton. It is a comprehensive overview of scientific information available about the environmental and social sustainability of 3 types of production systems of cotton: conventional, IPM and organic. The study was commissioned by consumers’ organisation Goede Waar & Co. The report is in English and can be downloaded from the following web site: www.wur.nl/NR/rdonlyres/24D8701B-F547-4E5B-986E-1BD07BD2D263/21267/Rapport223binnenWEB.pdf
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International Science Shop Cooperation – Science education and careers call

EC opened negotiations about a proposal submitted in Science education and careers 2005

The Bonn Science Shop and the University of applied Science Höxter from Germany, Intermediu Bucharest and Intermediu Bacau from Romania and the Institute of Environmental and Landscape Management (ESSRG) from Gödöllo, Hungary, have submitted a proposal on the development of further vocational training for child minder and teachers at primary schools in the Science education and careers 2005 call, which closed 31 January 2006 (FP6-2005-Science-and-society-16). The EC accepted this proposal and invited the consortium for contract negotiations, which are still ongoing. For more information, please contact norbert.steinhaus@wilabonn.de
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International Science Shop Cooperation – Science Shop call

Projects submitted in the Science Shop call (FP6-2005-Science-and-society-20) are in the phase of evaluation now. To evaluate the success of this call it is important we have an overview of proposals that have been submitted but also of proposals that have not been submitted in the end. When the evaluation phase is passed, Living Knowledge members will be asked to give some general information about their activities in this call. This is not an EC initiative but an initiative of the International Science Shop Contact Point (isso@bio.uu.nl)
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Problems of sustainable water management in Berlin and Brandenburg – waste, steppefication and contamination?

... was the title of a thematic conference held on May 16, 2006 in Berlin. It was organised as a public discussion by two departments of the Centre for Cooperation of the Technical University Berlin: `KOOP´ (Cooperation Between Science and the Working World) and the Science Shop `kubus´ (Cooperation and Consulting for Environmental Questions). The conference was sponsored by the foundation `Hans Böckler Stiftung´ and attracted about 120 participants from a number of institutions, research institutes, enterprises, trade unions, NGOs and other associations.

The president of the Brandenburg Environmental Agency, Prof. Matthias Freude, presented warning signs of climatic change in this German state (located around the conurbation Berlin). Decreasing annual precipitation and ground water levels and the salinisation of water and soil are growing problems and may lead to the transformation of large areas of land into steppe (steppefication). Prof. Martin Kaupenjohann (TU Berlin) focused on current studies of “preferential flow” of e.g. phosphate and lead and the so-called “first flush” of storm water. These scientific results are of practical relevance for agricultural soils in Brandenburg (and even for foreign countries with a different climate, like Thailand) as well as for urban soils of Berlin and similar conurbation areas. The presentation of Prof. Matthias Koziol (TU Cottbus) emphasised the importance of water and land management in areas of decreasing population, as found in most parts of Eastern Germany due to the demographic change. Proposals were made for an appropriate management including technical modifications and changing the dimension of water supply systems. Dr. Simone Klawitter (Water Sanitation Livelihoods and Institution Building), Mr. Norbert Schmidt (Board Member of the Berlin Water Supply Company) and Ms. Susanne Stumpenhusen (Chairwoman of the Public Service Trade Union ver.di /Berlin-Brandenburg branch and Vice-Chairwoman of the Berlin Water Holding) presented facts and opinions about economic challenges for sustainable water management for this area. The final discussion brought together diverse statements and proposals for better cooperation among the different actors.

For more information in German, please visit www.herd-und-hof.de/index/cmd/catalogue_details/modul/portal/kernwert/landwirtschaft/block/catalogue_1 . If you would like to use our discussion forum but your German is not adequate for written comments, please click www.tu-berlin.de/zek/forum . Your contribution in English is welcome and it will be translated as soon as possible.
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Towards a framework for ‘co-operative research’

Report of European Commission workshop

We live in a time of ever-increasing opportunities and challenges associated with new science and technology. As a result, there is growing interest and attention to the relationships between research, innovation and society. Real contrasts and tensions emerge between high level policy agendas concerned with the ‘knowledge based society’, with the stewardship of ‘democratic governance’ and with the pursuit of ‘sustainability’ and ‘precaution’ in science and technology. In short, we need to move away from the somewhat fragmented, introspective and reactive preoccupations of science and society, to a more integrated, open and proactive understanding of the inescapable place of science in society.

The findings from intensive discussions at an innovative two-day ‘Gover’Science’ Seminar organised by the Governance and Scientific Advice Unit of DG RTD in November 2005 are now published in a report. The complete report will be posted soon on the Science and Society web-site and its content reflected as much as possible in the preparation of the 7th Framework Programme. The pdf-file of the report can be already downloaded from the CIPAST website (www.cipast.org/download/GoverScienceFinalReport.pdf ). You can download the executive summary of the report here (http://www.cipast.org/download/FROMSCIENCEANDSOCIETYTOSCIENCEINSOCIETY.pdf ).
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Science Shops:
New Flyer, EU Website and Brochure

The EC printed a new flyer on Science Shops. This flyer focuses on different target groups, universities, students, citizens groups and local authorities. The flyer can be downloaded from the Living Knowledge website (www.livingknowledge.org , see section News).

Printed copies can be ordered for free at the European Commission from liz.versterlund@cec.eu.int .

The new Science and Society portal of the European Commission was launched on 14 November 2005. It replaces the previous Science and Society website. The portal is open to all news and organisations related to Science and Society (http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/home_en.cfm).
Still available at the old EU website are specific pages with general information about Science Shops as well as the minutes and single contributions of two Science Shop workshops organised by the European Commission (http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/scientific-awareness/shops_en.html).
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Living Knowledge Database

Over the last few years, there have been many requests for an overview of organizations and people active in community-based research. The Living Knowledge database will fulfil these needs.

The Living Knowledge Database is a free, public accessible resource for Science Shops and alike organizations, community-based (research) organizations, universities and policy makers worldwide. It is searchable on (type of) organization, people, country and (thematic) expertise in community based research, all over the world.

If you are an active organization dealing with community-based research, you are invited to add your information to the Living Knowledge Database at www.livingknowledge.org.

Please send your remarks on or questions about the database to the International Science Shop Contact Point (isso@bio.uu.nl). We need your feedback to optimise the use of the database.
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Frequently asked questions on Science Shops

The EC project TRAMS will deliver training and mentoring tools to support new and existing Science Shops and alike organisations. One of these tools is the section Frequently Asked Questions on the Living Knowledge website (www.livingknowledge.org). This FAQ section is a dynamic section. It is not a final version; questions and answers will be added. If you have any additional answers please feel free to contribute to the development of this section. A printable version of this section will be available soon.
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The DOTIK Training School

A Eureopean masterclass on Science and Society for museum explainers

SISSA, Trieste, 28 August – 2 September 2006

The DOTIK training school is the first European Masterclass specifically addressing explainers, animators, demonstrators and all the personnel directly interacting with the public in science centres, science museums, science festivals. It aims at enhancing the role of explainers in science centres and museums, to act as a proactive, two-way interface between science and society.

The DOTIK training school will be held in Trieste, Italy, from August 28 to September 2, 2006, in the premises of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) and the Immaginario Scientifico Science Centre. The participation to the school is limited to 50 explainers from European science centres and museums. Participation is free of charge and travel grants will be awarded to small centres and new European countries. Detailed information and application forms can be found on the web site www.dotik.eu . Deadline for application is June 14, 2006.
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Participatory Methods Toolkit

A practitioner‘s methodological manual now also available in German

‚Participation‘ has become a buzzword in government statements and policy papers and the concept is being given concrete shape. But how can participation be organised? What methods are available and when and how are they applied? What are the implications for the budget and staff? To offer a few answers to these questions, the King Baudouin Foundation and viWTA (The Vlaams Instituut voor Wetenschappelijk en Technologisch Aspectenonderzoek, an independent and autonomous institute) publishe a toolkit on participatory methods which is now alos available in German. It contains a presentation of ten methods (e.g. World Café, Citizens‘ Jury, Consensus Conference, Expert Panel), a step-by-step, hands-on manual, with detailed checklists and realistic expectations of outcomes. You can download a free copy at http://www.viwta.be/files/30890_ToolkitENGdef.pdf (Englisch) or at http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/ita/ebooks/Leitfaden_pTA_DE_Feb06.pdf (German)
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Conferences

June 21-25, 2006, Glasgow,UK

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation,

6th CIVICUS World Assembly: Acting Together For a Just World

This Assembly will bring together over a thousand civil society representatives from around the world under the theme ‘Acting together for a just world’. Get involved by visiting our website for updates on: Conference Registration, Conference Programme, Exhibitor Opportunities, News, and Discussion Board at www.civicusassembly.org

July 15-19, 2006, Munich, Germany

European Science Open Forum

http://www.esof2006.org/

August 22-25 2006, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Science Shop summerschool
www.livingknowledge.org

August, 23-26 2006, Lausanne, Switzerland

EASST 2006; Reviewing humanness: bodies, technologies and spaces, http://www2.unil.ch/easst2006/

November, 3-4 2006, Heidelberg, Germany

Genes, Brain/Mind and Behaviour, EMBL/EMBO Science & Society conference at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, www.embl.org/conference2006/scope06

WiFi Infrastructure

2006-05-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

My friend and colleaugue Tracey Lauriault, is one of the founders of a group looking to create WiFi infrastructure in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. Check out what she has going at:

http://serendipityoucity.blogsome.com/

Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education and Action

2006-05-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

From the CCPH listserve:

You may recall the earlier posting when we announced a new journal that is being published by Johns Hopkins University Press called 'Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education and Action (PCHP). The mission of the Journal is to facilitate dissemination of programs that use community partnerships to improve public health, to promote progress in the methods of research and education involving community health partnerships, and to stimulate action that will improve the health of people in communities. For more information, including a listing of the journal's editorial board members, visit
http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/progress_in_community_health_partnerships/

The journal has begun receiving manuscripts and its online processing system, Manuscript Central, at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pchp is now operational.

They would like the earliest issues of PCHP to feature articles from leaders in the field of health partnership research such as you, CBPR listserv members! By featuring exemplars of health partnership research in the journal's earliest issues, they hope to provide models for subsequent manuscripts submitted by other authors as well as to enhance the visibility of PCHP.

The journal editors are happy to discuss with you any ideas you have for a potential submission to PCHP. Please direct any questions, comments, or suggestions to Managing Editor, Mark Newgent at 410-955-6669 or mnewgent@jhmi.edu

How to Change a Mind

2006-05-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

My friend and colleague Nick Barrowman sent this blog article a little while ago. I thought I would share it:

"This post, on "How to change a mind", might have some relevance to knowledge translation:"

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-change-mind.html

Nick Barrowman, PhD
Chief Biostatistician, Chalmers Research Group
Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute
401 Smyth Road, Ottawa, Ontario, K1H 8L1, Canada
Tel (613) 737-7600 ext. 3971
Fax (613) 738-4800
Email nbarrowman@cheo.on.ca
URL http://www.chalmersresearch.com

Blogger Ethics Survey

2006-05-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Blogger,

We have received more than 1,000 participants from across the world in our survey on ethics and blogging conducted between 6 Feb and 1 Mar 2005. We sincerely thank all of you who have done the survey, and apologise for the long delay in releasing the results.

The results are now available at http://www.weblogethics.blogspot.com/ . We choose to post the results on blogspot so as to share this information firsthand with the blogging community. At the same time, this is an effort to contribute to the
ongoing debate on weblog ethics and ethical codes. Please feel free to email us your feedback or post comments on our blog. We would be most glad if you can also provide a link to our blog to share the survey results with your friends.

Alternatively, the results are also available at The Singapore Internet Research Centre http://www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc/

Community Education Service

2006-05-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

The Community Education Service has just finished the first phase of what we hope will be an on-going project to share and develop expertise in large-group education for parents and young people. Through funding from the Provincial Centre of Excellence for Children's Mental Health, we have presented information about the effectiveness of large-group parent education programs to five communities across Ontario, including Kingston, Brockville, Woodstock, Halton, and Windsor. We're presently scheduling additional presentations for April and May.

Several of the communities are now preparing to use our web-based data system to collect information about their workshops, courses, and groups. My colleagues in Hamilton have been our "beta-testers" as we rolled out the new system, and our new Spring 2006 flyer was developed on the new database. Additional features include the selection of your specific community, and selection of a "main focus" for your educational offering. These features will help us construct a better search function, so that parents can find the courses they are looking for more easily.

Other features that you won't see, are the administrative tools to help the person in your community who is pulling together your local flyer. They can now set the dates the database will accept registrations, determine the range of program dates to include in each flyer, and send out a reminder e-mail to everyone in your community.

If your community is looking for funding to offer large-group education, we will soon have a proposal template that you can use to seek funding from organizations or local foundations. It presents the case for why community education is important, and reviews the evidence that it is effective. For a copy of the funding case, e-mail me at the address below.

This list serv is designed to help foster a "community-of-practice". If you have questions about community education, are looking for effective, evidence-based large-group interventions, or want to get some great suggestions on how to increase enrolment in your course, this is the place to post those questions. We have more than 100 participants, whose collective knowledge will be equal to almost any challenge.

Finally, I'd like to thank all those of you who have helped us along this path by suggesting changes and improvements to our web site, by offering high-quality parent courses, and by showing leadership in your agency and community by adopting evidence-based programs that educate and inform our clients.

Don Buchanan
Coordinator, Child & Youth Health Partnership
McMaster Children's Hospital

Evel 1, Chedoke Site
Box 2000, Hamilton, ON L8N 3Z5

'(905) 521-2100, ext. 77061
7(905) 521-7925 fax
/ buchanan@hhsc.ca
http://www.mcmasterchildrenshospital.ca

3rd International Conference on KM - London

2006-05-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

This conference at the University of Greenwich may be of interest.

http://www.ickm2006.org/

London UK Knowledge Network

2006-05-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

Geoff Gurd from the PHAC sent along this link to a London-based network that operates in a similar manner to the Ottawa-based IKMF. He suggests that any visitors to London, interested in KE/KM contact them.

http://www.londonknowledgenetwork.org.uk/

KE as a Giant Hairball?

2006-05-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7597

Creativity is crucial to business success. But too often, even the most innovative organization quickly becomes a "giant hairball" - a tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, traditions, and systems, all based on what worked in the past - that exercises an inexorable pull into mediocrity. Gordon McKenzie worked at Hallmark Cards for thirty years, many of which he spent inspiring his colleagues to slip the bonds of Corporate Normalcy and rise to orbit - to a mode of dreaming, daring and doing above and beyond the rubber-stamp confines of the administrative mind-set. In his deeply funny book, exuberantly illustrated in full color, he shares the story of his own professional evolution, together with lessons on awakening and fostering creative genius.

Learning from all sectors

2006-05-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

Paul McDowall via the IKMF sent along this list of documents from the philanthropic sector. There is an interesting report on knowledge management that may have some utility for those working in other domains:

Leveraging What You Know: Knowledge Management Strategies for Funders
Published by GEO, 2004, 20 pages.
An overview of the knowledge management in philanthropy, with special attention to technology-supported taxonomies, organizational culture assessment and effective communication. Includes short case studies and lessons learned from grantmakers using knowledge management strategies in their own organizations.

http://www.geofunders.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=150

Knowledge translation in developing countries.

2006-05-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

My friendly neighbourhood epidemiologist, Ray Deonandan, sent me this link to a new article by Santesso and Tugwell at the Institute for Population Health at the University of Ottawa.

J Contin Educ Health Prof. 2006 Winter;26(1):87-96.

Centre for Global Health, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

There is increasing evidence that the application of knowledge in developing countries is failing. One reason is the woeful shortage of health workers, but as this is redressed, it is also crucial that we have an evidence base of what works to minimize the "know-do gap." The World Health Organization and other international organizations are actively building momentum to promote research to determine effective strategies for knowledge translation (KT). At this time, the evidence base for the effectiveness of those strategies is not definitive in developed countries and is relatively sparse in developing countries. It appears, however, that the effectiveness of these strategies is highly variable and dependent on the setting, and success hinges on whether the strategies have been tailored. A useful framework to provide direction for tailoring interventions is the Ottawa Model of Research Use (OMRU). Underlying OMRU is the principle that success rests with tailoring KT strategies to the salient barriers and supports found within the setting. The model recommends that barriers and supports found in the practice environment or as characteristics of potential adopters and the evidence-based innovation or research evidence be assessed and then the KT strategy tailored and executed. The model also recommends that whether the research has been applied and has resulted in improved health outcomes should be measured. Studies in developing countries, although few, illustrate that the OMRU approach may be a valid method of tackling the challenges of KT strategies to improve health care in developing countries.

PMID: 16557514 [PubMed - in process]

Internet Access

2006-05-11T06:56:00.000-07:00

A good friend works at an agency that is about to release some surprising numbers on access to the Internet by Canadians.

We discussed these last night after watching the Ottawa Senators choke through another playoff game.

It is clear that Canada has backed off Internet access - it was only recently that we were the most connected country in the world - does this mean we are losing connections or just not working as hard at developing the "last mile". A typical Canadian problem.

Country Users per 100 iinhabitants

Sweden 75.46
Korea (Rep) 65.68
Australia 65.28
Finland 63.00
U.S. 63.00
U.K. 62.88
Canada 62.36
Denmark 60.41
Singapore 56.12
Japan 50.20
Germany 42.67
France 41.37

Icon?

2006-01-03T18:58:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation is one of the world's leading organizations funding, researching, promoting, and building capacity in knowledge exchange. I have had the honour to serve on several of their review panels. It was with some amusement that today, I saw for the first time, the icon linking to Knowledge Brokers - my head.

Now people can click on my face to learn more about knowledge brokering. Let's just hope that they understand the difference between virtual and real worlds.

National Knowledge Exchange Centre for Mental Health and Addiction

2005-11-28T09:59:00.000-08:00

Organizations laud Kirby Committee's proposed new Canadian Mental Health Commission

TORONTO, Nov. 24 /CNW/ -

Creating a new Canadian body empowered to throw a national spotlight onto the marginalized issues of mental health and addictions and keep it there until effective solutions are implemented has won the praise of three of Ontario's leading mental health and addiction organizations. The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs (OFCMHAP) and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) today applauded the Federal Ministry of Health's decision to accept the proposal by Senator Kirby's Standing Committee to create a Canadian Mental Health Commission to move these long-neglected health issues into the mainstream through initiatives such as a national Knowledge Exchange Centre and anti-stigma campaign.

"The need for such a commission to focus on mental health and addiction issues across the country is undeniable," commented Karen McGrath, CMHA, Ontario's CEO today. "The quality of the mental health services you receive should not depend on where in Canada you live. A national commission to make objective, evidence-based 'best practice' information on mental illness and addictions equally available to communities and governments across Canada will have an incredibly positive effect on the quality of care and services received by some of the most vulnerable people in our country." "While needing to recognize the unique services of addiction providers, the creation of a national body is an important step towards helping the many vulnerable Canadians facing an addiction and or mental illness," said David Kelly, Executive Director of OFCMHAP. "It also recognizes that we in Canada have a lot of catching up to do - mental health and addictions have fallen behind other health issues despite the fact they directly affect one in five Canadians and have severe social, employment and economic implications." But for Dr. Paul Garfinkel, CAMH President and CEO, it is the proposal's emphasis on reducing stigma and ending discrimination that resonates most strongly: "Every day we hear from patients and their families who delayed seeking treatment because they feared the social stigma that a diagnosis of mental illness or addiction would bring. In fact, research shows that two-thirds of affected people never seek treatment. The power of stigma cannot be underestimated, and this commitment by the Federal Government to create a national commission to help educate Canadians about the reality of mental illness -- with the ultimate goal of eliminating all forms of discrimination against people and families living with mental illness -- will be welcomed from coast to coast," Dr. Garfinkel said. -30- /For further information: or to schedule interviews, contact: Liz Scanlon, CMHA, Ontario, (416) 977-5580 ext. 4131; Michael Torres, CAMH, (416) 595-6015; David Kelly, OFCMHAP, (416) 490-8900 ext. 22/

CANADIAN MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION

Commission established to serve country's mental health needs Prompt action urged to continue momentum

OTTAWA, Nov. 24 /CNW/ -

The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) applauds the Minister of Health for announcing today the establishment of a Commission on Mental Health, Mental Illness and Substance Abuse. The CMHA views this as a momentous step towards the development and implementation of a strategy to address the mental health needs of all the people of Canada. "We strongly urge the Minister of Health to promptly meet with representatives from the mental health/mental illness stakeholder community -including consumers of mental health services - to discuss the steps required to ensure this Commission becomes a reality in early 2006," says Penelope Marrett, National CEO, the Canadian Mental Health Association. "We must now focus on building momentum, even during this time of political uncertainty." This Commission's work will be critical for the improved health of all people of Canada: the one in five who will develop a mental illness during their lifetime; the many more who will experience other mental health problems; and all those individuals around them whose lives will be indirectly effected - at home, at school, at work and in their communities. Canada remains one of the only developed countries without a mental health strategy in place. With more than six million people requiring a range of mental health services in this country's communities - from rural to urban - a coordinated well planned approach to serving those needs is imperative,Marrett adds. "The Commission's success will ultimately be judged on the development and implementation of a strategy for mental health and mental illness for this country, but the government cannot do it alone. We anticipate and look forward to being involved at every step along the way." The Canadian Mental Health Association is a national, voluntary organization that exists to promote the mental health of all people and to serve mental health consumers, their families and friends through education, public awareness, research, advocacy and direct services, in more than 135 communities across the country.

Knowledge Exchange Literature

2005-11-14T20:23:00.000-08:00

The existing literature on knowledge exchange and mobilization tells us a number of things:

1. Knowledge generated in research is not sufficiently transferred to practice or to decision-making.

2. Knowledge exchange and mobilization in isolation is ineffective. A necessary precedent in the movement towards evidence-based decision making is the building of sustainable relationships between individuals, organizations, and contexts.

3. Timing is critical for reception, acceptance, and implementation of knowledge.

4. There is so much new knowledge being created that it is virtually impossible to keep up to date on all of the most current research.

5. Passive dissemination of information is generally ineffective.

6. There are many barriers to the implementation of new knowledge.

7. Evaluation of knowledge exchange and mobilization activities appears to be a particularly unexplored area.

8. None of the approaches for transferring evidence is superior to others – there is no “silver bullet”.

9. Changes start at a structural level.

10. Strong incentives need to be developed for individuals to invest time and effort in knowledge exchange and mobilization practices.

11. Knowledge exchange and mobilization needs to involve collaboration of all individuals involved - from decision-makers, to researchers, to those who will be implementing the research, and all those in between.

Wide Range of Related Terms

2005-11-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Exchange, as an emerging and growing field, follows similar patterns to other areas of work which are growing and in the process of defining themselves. In the search for meaning, it is normal that many terms are used to define related activities and functions. Over time and with utilization, the terms seem to fall into place and a collective understanding emerges.` Often a leader emerges that helps to clarify the most acceptable meaning. This was the case with Etienne Wenger and Communities of Practice.

A recent study by sociologist Dr. Ian Graham and research program manager Jacqueline Tetroe at the OHRI in Ottawa, identified 27 terms in current usage by an international sample of funding agencies to describe their knowledge exchange mechanisms. Their study concluded that this is a time of rapid evolution for agencies funding knowledge exchange activities. It also noted that despite a wide range of strategies, little is yet known about their effectiveness. Some of the best work to date however has come from the fields of business intelligence research and health research. Both fields have invested millions of dollars in KE experiments, with important lessons emerging about the paradox of the simplicity and complexity of the processes involved.

1. Applied research
2. Knowledge cycle
3. Research mediation
4. Capacity building
5. Knowledge exchange
6. Research transfer
7. Co-optation, cooperation, competing
8. Knowledge management
9. Research translation
10. Diffusion
11. Knowledge translation
12. Science communication
13. Dissemination
14. Knowledge mobilization
15. Teaching
16. Getting knowledge into practice
17. Knowledge transfer
18. "Third mission"
19. Impact
20. Linkage and exchange
21. Translational research
22. Implementation
23. Popularization of research
24. Transmission
25. Knowledge communication
26. Research into practice
27. Utilization

Knowledge Utilization Chair

2005-11-12T08:02:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation jointly fund a research chair held by Dr. Rejean Landry at the Universite Laval in Quebec City.

The Knowledge Utilization Chair produces some of the best updates available on knowledge transfer research and events. Subscribers can receive an e-bulletin that summarizes the important happenings in knowledge transfer. Although the focus is on health, there is utility for people in other sectors, interested in knowledge exchange issues. There is no fee for the e-bulletin.

Definition of Knowledge Exchange and Knowledge Mobilization

2005-11-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Exchange:

KE is the push and pull found in the multiple directional movement of data, information, and knowledge between individuals and groups for mutual benefit. Particular consideration is given to the formats best received by audiences. It also includes mechanisms that determine current and ongoing needs, as well as the timeliness of these needs. The roles of producer and user of knowledge are interchangeable (E.g., university researchers are frequent users of other researcher’s output, schools produce databases which are then used by university researchers).

Knowledge Mobilization:

KM is the active process of creating linkage and exchange between producers and users of data, information, and knowledge to engage in value-added activities. It includes a more entrepreneurial perspective than is often seen in disciplinary academic research (E.g., the "final report" becomes the mid-point of the discussion) and includes awareness of opportunities, key partnerships, market conditions, technological supports, and concepts of innovation.