An evolving partnership between policy-makers and researchers in prioritisation, production and dissemination of systematic reviews: lessons learned from Norway

Session: 

Oral session: Patient or healthcare consumers involvement and shared decision-making (7)

Date: 

Tuesday 18 September 2018 - 12:00 to 12:20

Location: 

Ochil 2

All authors in correct order:

Berg RC1, Hernes T2
1 Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway
2 Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration, Norway
Presenting author and contact person

Presenting author:

Rigmor C Berg

Contact person:

Rigmor C Berg
Abstract text
Background:
Care and policy development should be informed by trustworthy research, but ensuring the use of systematic reviews in development can be problematic. This is often because researchers and policy-makers are inadequately connected. Collaboration has been proposed as a key strategy to close the research-policy gap.

Objectives:
A researcher and commissioner will together describe the evolution and characteristics of a collaborative partnership established between a review team and policy-makers in Norway, specifically sharing experiences and strategies to strengthen research-policy linkages and thereby improve the production and uptake of evidence in policy contexts.

Methods:
Case-study method with the phenomenon of interest being first-line consumer participation in the planning, design, reporting and brokering of systematic reviews, where consumers are decision-makers who commission and use reviews for policy development.

Results:
Over the last seven years, the collaboration has evolved from nominal co-operation to true partnership. There are more regular and frequent meetings, sharing of news and updates, tailored workshops (e.g. literature searching, GRADE) and reviews are now being undertaken in many fields for different research questions. The collaboration includes prioritisation, scoping (iterative knowledge brokering process to formulate and refine the scope of and questions for the reviews), production (e.g. commissioners serve as advisory group members, comment on report drafts, provide guidance on readability) and dissemination of reviews, with events such as shared launch and news briefs of completed reviews. We are in the process of developing a guide for engaging first-line users of reviews and structuring the collaboration. The collaboration focuses on knowledge for action in contrast to knowledge for understanding and thus helps to optimise the uptake of reviews uptake in policy contexts.

Conclusions:
Narrowing the research-policy gap and ensuring use of policy-relevant reviews can be achieved through close collaboration between the research and policy worlds, but it takes time and requires adaptation on both sides.

Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
Through collaboration with review teams, consumers help ensure that research is ethical, relevant and acceptable from a public perspective.

Relevance to patients and consumers: 

For first-line consumers - the commissioners and users of reviews - close collaboration with producers of reviews are important. Through collaboration with review teams, they help ensure that the research is ethical, relevant, and acceptable from a public perspective, and they increase their capacity to access and use research. Consumer partners helped reach this statement.