Commentary - Summary - Dissemination: Current Conversations and Practices

Abstract

The dissemination of research in a manner that leads to its effective implementation is a topic of concern across disciplines and practices. As the demands on scarce health-care resources increase, a shift to evidence-based decision-making and practice is required. Despite attention to the need for effective and efficient communication among researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, a gap exists between research evidence for practice and actual practice. Yet, although dissemination is widely acknowledged to be a pivotal concept linking research and practice, discussions on this topic often devolve into opposing themes (science versus practice, researcher versus practitioner, creation versus application) that can hinder genuine communication and mask important issues that require collaboration. The realization that progress still has to be made if truly intersectoral, collaborative, comprehensive dissemination is to be achieved was the foundation for the workshop Conversations in Dissemination, hosted by the Alberta Consortium for Health Promotion on May 5, 1999. The workshop focused on how researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and others can help one another to access, interpret, apply, and participate in a more broadly conceived dissemination process. Through staged conversations - co-facilitated by researchers and practitioners - participants from academia, practice, and intermediary groupings were helped to define their multiple roles in the creation and application of knowledge and to identify specific dissemination strategies. Keynote speaker Dr. Penelope Hawe suggested that relationships - as well as having supportive and rational organizational climates - are crucial to successful dissemination, that knowledge is developed on both sides of the practitioner/researcher divide, and that researchers