The newly released Innovations in Knowledge Translation: the SPHERU KT Casebook provides a cross-section of health research and the innovative strategies used for sharing these stories.
The Casebook, published by the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU), is edited by Juanita Bacsu and kidSKAN’s Fleur Macqueen Smith.
The knowledge translation (KT) stories range from a music video for sharing healing stories of Aboriginal women’s drug addiction to a national symposium aimed at promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors among school-aged children in Trinidad and Tobago. As well, kidSKAN is included, providing a successful example of a checklist on how researchers can connect with decision-makers.
The Casebook is intended as a toolkit for academics, researchers, community practitioners, policy makers and others, and includes knowledge translation strategies, methods, and evaluations that highlight methods of KT evaluation and factors related to successful knowledge translation.
SPHERU’s casebook is modeled on those produced by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in the past few years, which are available online. (Some can be found at: http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/29484.html.) The titles include:
• Knowledge to Action: An End-of-Grant Knowledge Translation Casebook
• Knowledge to Action: A Knowledge Translation Casebook -- This casebook includes a case by Fleur Macqueen Smith and Nazeem Muhajarine of SPHERU.
• IPPH KT Casebook: Moving population and public health knowledge into action -- This casebook includes cases from Nazeem Muhajarine, Tom McIntosh and Fleur Macqueen Smith on a Healthy Children project; and from Sylvia Abonyi and Bonnie Jeffery on an Aboriginal health project.
• IHSPR KT Casebook: Evidence in action, acting on evidence
• CIHR also produced a downloadable partnerships casebook called Healthier Together: The CIHR Partnerships Casebook, which includes a case on the Feelings in Pregnancy study authored by Angela Bowen, Nazeem Muhajarine and Fleur Macqueen Smith at SPHERU.
• CIHR and the Canadian Population Health Initiative also partnered to produce a casebook on intervention research, The Population Health Intervention Research Casebook, which includes a case from Fleur Macqueen Smith, Nazeem Muhajarine and others on SPHERU’s evaluation of Saskatchewan’s KidsFirst early childhood intervention program.
By Mike Chouinard, kidSKAN managing editor. He can be reached at mike.chouinard@usask.ca.
