Development of a knowledge broker group to support evidence-informed policy: lessons learned from Myanmar

Background Globally, policy-makers face challenges to using evidence in health decision-making, particularly lack of interaction between research and policy. Knowledge-brokering mechanisms can fill research–policy gaps and facilitate evidence-informed policy-making. In Myanmar, the need to promote evidence-informed policy is significant, and thus a mechanism was set up for this purpose. This paper discusses lessons learned from the development of the Knowledge Broker Group–Myanmar (KBG-M), supported by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Applied Mental Health Research Group (JHU) and Community Partners International (CPI). Methods Sixteen stakeholders were interviewed to explore challenges in formulating evidence-informed policy. Two workshops were held: the first to further understand the needs of policy-makers and discuss knowledge-brokering approaches, and the second to co-create the KBG-M structure and process. The KBG-M was then envisioned as an independent body, with former officials of the Ministry of Health and Sports (MoHS) and representatives from the nongovernmental sector actively engaging in the health sector, with an official collaboration with the MoHS. Results A development task force that served as an advisory committee was established. Then, steps were taken to establish the KBG-M and obtain official recognition from the MoHS. Finally, when the technical agreement with the MoHS was nearly complete, the process stopped because of the military coup on 1 February 2021, and is now on hold indefinitely. Conclusions Learning from this process may be helpful for future or current knowledge-brokering efforts, particularly in fragile, conflict-affected settings. Experienced and committed advisory committee members enhanced stakeholder relationships. Responsive coordination mechanisms allowed for adjustments to a changing bureaucratic landscape. Coordination with similar initiatives avoided overlap and identified areas needing technical support. Recommendations to continue the work of the KBG-M itself or similar platforms include the following: increase resilience to contextual changes by ensuring diverse partnerships, maintain advisory committee members experienced and influential in the policy-making process, ensure strong organizational and funding support for effective functioning and sustainability, have budget and timeline flexibility to allow sufficient time and resources for establishment, organize ongoing needs assessments to identify areas needing technical support and to develop responsive corrective approaches, and conduct information sharing and collaboration between stakeholders to ensure alignment.

Creating Conditions for Effective Knowledge Brokering: A Qualitative Case Study

Background: Process improvement in healthcare is informed by knowledge from the private sector. Following which, individuals broker such knowledge to the frontline of care delivery. Their effect is likely limited where the context proves unreceptive to brokering knowledge. We need greater insight into what organizational and system level conditions are necessary to support individuals to broker process improvement knowledge to the frontline of care delivery, and how policy makers and organizations might generate such conditions. Methods: Our research took place in a healthcare system within an Australian State. Following COREQ guidelines for qualitative research, we undertook qualitative research over the four year period of the process improvement intervention encompassing 57 semi-structured interviews, 12 focus groups, and 137 hours observation of process improvement workshops, which involved improvement advisors (the knowledge brokers), policy makers, and executive sponsors. Results: We identified four phases of the process improvement intervention that moved towards a mature collaboration within which knowledge brokering by improvement advisors emerged as effective. In the first phase knowledge brokering was not established. In a second phase, whilst initiated, it lacked legitimacy amongst frontline practitioners, following which they resisted the brokering of process improvement knowledge by improvement advisors. Only following reflection by policy makers, and actions to engender a receptive context were improvement advisors able to effectively broker knowledge to frontline professionals for process improvement. Conclusion: We highlight four interlinked prescriptions for the conditions policy makers need to engender to support individuals to broker process improvement knowledge to the frontline of care delivery, and how they go about this. Policy makers should: respect local context through building cultural linkages between people and organizations; build individuals’ knowledge integration skills; awaken and enable active and latent “seekers” of knowledge to pull knowledge upward; strengthen collaboration, not competition so as to be friend, not foe, to healthcare organizations on their knowledge integration journey.

Knowledge Mobilization and Academic Health Science Centres in Australia: Comment on "Academic Health Science Centres as Vehicles for Knowledge Mobilisation in Australia? A Qualitative Study"

Extant research on knowledge mobilization points to barriers and opportunities for innovation. Edelman et al paper "Academic Health Science Centres as Vehicles for Knowledge Mobilisation in Australia? A Qualitative Study" builds nicely on the existing knowledge base by evaluating the early stages of organisational development of Academic Health Science Centers in Australia. This commentary discusses their research findings by drawing on relevant themes including knowledge mobilization initiatives that have been developed globally to bridge the research-practice gap and knowledge brokering roles for service improvement. Following which, the commentary draws on organizational capabilities literature for knowledge brokering to happen, the latter including the need for measuring implementation fidelity amongst other capabilities. Finally, building on Edelman et al call for more attention to action-oriented roles and knowledge mobilization processes to deliver strategic goals the commentary concludes with a note for collective leadership as an enabler of knowledge mobilization with impact and at scale.

Investigating the challenges and opportunities of a bilingual equity knowledge brokering network: A critical and reflective perspective from university partners

Public education systems are often large, diverse, fragmented, and historically very hard to change. While previous reforms targeted primarily school staff, large-scale policies now include a broader audience including non-system organizations (e.g., knowledge brokering organizations) that may influence directly or indirectly policy implementation. Arguing that knowledge brokering organizations can contribute to policy implementation by bridging equity policy and research and practice at the local level, we put forward that their networks and relationships with districts, schools, and community organizations can bring about substantial changes to the organization and practices of schools on equity issues, even though they may face obstacles in implementing change due to particular contexts. We aim to better understand the role of knowledge brokering networks and of the university partners who act as knowledge brokers to bridge Ontario Ministry of Education policy goals with equity research and practice. As knowledge brokers working in a bilingual province-wide equity knowledge brokering network, we use our experiences as a particular case of a non-system role in system-wide reforms. We build on these experiences to question and self-reflect on our role as knowledge brokers who accompanied practitioners and community coalition leaders towards equity and inclusion over a 2-year period. By analyzing knowledge brokering functions, we show the challenges and opportunities we faced as knowledge brokers in guiding local equity and inclusion initiatives: 1) the roles we carried out during interactions and practices that could take on different meanings as knowledge producers and mobilizers; 2) we point out how and why these knowledge brokering functions and our roles within a bilingual province-wide network needed to adapt to local realities by providing for a more flexible planning process that allowed for sufficient time to identify local needs and to produce, if necessary, the knowledge that incorporated cultural context considerations or particularities.

Exploring the field and practice of knowledge mobilization: identifying common approaches and priority competencies using Q-methodology

With the growing interest to understand knowledge mobilization (KMb) and knowledge brokering in practice, this Major Research Paper investigates the viewpoints of knowledge mobilization experts, researchers, intermediaries, and practitioners regarding priority KMb activities, and the competencies and skills required for such tasks. This mixed methods study employed Q-Methodology, with data collected in two major phases. First, expert interviews were conducted with 20 KMb experts from Canada and the UK to develop the study’s concourse and subsequent q-statements. Second, 91 participants completed an online Q-survey, with a Q-sort task with 49 q-statements and an activity-rating task with 31 activities. Respondents also answered a range of open-ended questions pertaining to their KMb work, training, and perspectives. A crucial component of this research is the use of the Great Eight Competencies Framework, also known as the Universal Competencies Framework (UCF). Analysis identified four distinct approaches to KMb and puts forward a preliminary hierarchy of KMb competencies, according to the survey responses. The proposed hierarchy advances current understandings of KMb in demonstrating commonalities in competencies across various professions and fields. KMb practitioners and researchers are encouraged to respond and refine this initial list of priority competencies according to their workplace and/or research contexts.

Exploring the field and practice of knowledge mobilization: identifying common approaches and priority competencies using Q-methodology

With the growing interest to understand knowledge mobilization (KMb) and knowledge brokering in practice, this Major Research Paper investigates the viewpoints of knowledge mobilization experts, researchers, intermediaries, and practitioners regarding priority KMb activities, and the competencies and skills required for such tasks. This mixed methods study employed Q-Methodology, with data collected in two major phases. First, expert interviews were conducted with 20 KMb experts from Canada and the UK to develop the study’s concourse and subsequent q-statements. Second, 91 participants completed an online Q-survey, with a Q-sort task with 49 q-statements and an activity-rating task with 31 activities. Respondents also answered a range of open-ended questions pertaining to their KMb work, training, and perspectives. A crucial component of this research is the use of the Great Eight Competencies Framework, also known as the Universal Competencies Framework (UCF). Analysis identified four distinct approaches to KMb and puts forward a preliminary hierarchy of KMb competencies, according to the survey responses. The proposed hierarchy advances current understandings of KMb in demonstrating commonalities in competencies across various professions and fields. KMb practitioners and researchers are encouraged to respond and refine this initial list of priority competencies according to their workplace and/or research contexts.

Geographical Indication Building Process for Sharr Cheese (Kosovo): “Inside Insights” on Sustainability

This article aims to contribute to the reflection on sustainability in the field of Geographical Indications (GI). GIs are instruments for organizing collective action that have great interpretative flexibility. They are mobilized by a set of qualifying actors of differing natures, with diverse and sometimes divergent interests. For this reason, we focus on how the dimension of sustainability emerges from a collective learning process. Based on the approaches developed by Organization Studies, this article describes and analyzes the process of creating a GI for Sharr Cheese, a Balkan seasonal sheep pastoral cheese highly typical of a mountain range in Kosovo ◆ (◆ This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.). The authors occupied an embedded research position in this learning process, from 2015 to 2019. The article describes boundary work carried out by the facilitators of collective action (brokers) within experimental spaces during the GI-building process. It analyzes how environmental accountability within the Sharr Cheese GI emerges from a strategic knowledge-brokering process and intensive institutional work.

Knowledge brokering on infectious diseases for public health

The National Collaborating Centres (NCCs) for Public Health (NCCPH) were established in 2005 as part of the federal government’s commitment to renew and strengthen public health following the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic. They were set up to support knowledge translation for more timely use of scientific research and other knowledges in public health practice, programs and policies in Canada. Six centres comprise the NCCPH, including the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCCID). The NCCID works with public health practitioners to find, understand and use research and evidence on infectious diseases and related determinants of health. The NCCID has a mandate to forge connections between those who generate and those who use infectious diseases knowledge. As the first article in a series on the NCCPH, we describe our role in knowledge brokering and the numerous methods and products that we have developed. In addition, we illustrate how NCCID has been able to work with public health to generate and share knowledge during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

A network case of knowledge brokering

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is two-fold: (1) to offer a conceptual understanding of knowledge brokering from a sociometric point-of-view; and (2) to provide an empirical example of this conceptualization in an education context.Design/methodology/approachWe use social network theory and analysis tools to explore knowledge exchange patterns among a group of teachers, instructional coaches and administrators who are collectively seeking to build increased capacity for effective mathematics instruction. We propose the concept of network activity to measure direct and indirect knowledge brokerage through the use of degree and betweenness centrality measures. Further, we propose network utility—measured by tie multiplexity—as a second key component of effective knowledge brokering.FindingsOur findings suggest significant increases in both direct and indirect knowledge brokering activity across the network over time. Teachers, in particular, emerge as key knowledge brokers within this networked learning community. Importantly, there is also an increase in the number of resources exchanged through network relationships over time; the most active knowledge brokers in this social ecosystem are those individuals who are exchanging multiple forms of knowledge.Originality/valueThis study focuses on knowledge brokering as it presents itself in the relational patterns among educators within a social ecosystem. While it could be that formal organizational roles may encapsulate knowledge brokering across physical structures with an education system (e.g. between schools and central offices), these individuals are not necessarily the people who are most effectively brokering knowledge across actors within the broader social network.