The Preventative Health taskforce (2009) called for a National Strategic Framework for preventive health research in Australia: the Healthiest Country by 2020. The Taskforce saw the need for better research translating evidence into policy and practice. The Australian National Preventive Health Agency has developed this strategy using an extensive stakeholder consultation process and launched it on 26 June 2013.
Objectives
A national effort to:
• promote the necessary approach for knowledge production
• build on current research infrastructure to increase collaboration
• increase research application to policy and practice
The challenge
• A new approach required for establishing the evidence for integrated preventive health action
• Historical approaches leave a divide between research and policy and practice
• Use of knowledge translation strategies can meet funding, cultural and capacity barriers
Strategic action
The Strategy aims to be transformative in the following areas:
• Knowledge has to be transferred or translated > Research transformed into knowledge-for-policy
• Relationships are vehicles to relay results > Relationships are collaborations
• Knowledge to policy is linear > Knowledge production is in an integrated cycle in which new knowledge is derived in applications
• Translation is an end-game > Use of evidence requires an integrated process of framing the problem, sourcing the evidence, generating the evidence, navigating through shared contexts and applying the evidence
The four building blocks (Figure 1) create the collaborative, integrative preventive health research model for this Strategy.
Figure 1: A model for preventive health research: building blocks for collaboration and integration