Despite the increased emphasis placed on the use of evidence for policy development, relatively few initiatives have been developed to support evidence-informed decision-making, especially in West ...Africa. Moreover, studies examining the conditions under which policy-makers use research-based evidence are still scarce, but they show that their attitudes and opinions about research are one of the main determinants of such use. In February 2017, Burkina Faso's Minister of Health planned to create a unit to promote evidence-informed decision-making within the ministry. Before the unit was set up, documenting the attitudes towards research at the highest levels of his Ministry appeared profitable to the unit's planning.
Individual interviews were conducted by the author with 14 actors positioned to consider evidence during decision-making from the Burkina Faso's Minister of health cabinet. An interview grid was used to explore several themes such as attitudes towards research, obstacles and facilitators to research use, example of research use in decision-making and finally, ways to increase decision-makers' participation in knowledge transfer activities. Interviews were partially transcribed and analysed by the author.
The results show a mixed attitude towards research and relatively little indication of research use reported by respondents. Important obstacles were identified: evidence inaccessibility, lack of implementation guidelines, absence of clear communication strategy and studies' lack of relevance for decision-making. Many suggestions were proposed such as raising awareness, improving access and research communication and prioritizing interactions with researchers. Respondents agree with the low participation of decision-makers in knowledge transfer activities: more leadership from the senior officials was suggested and greater awareness of the importance of their presence.
The conclusion presents avenues for reflection and action to increase the potential impact of the knowledge transfer unit planned within the Ministry of Health of Burkina Faso. This innovative initiative will be impactful if the obstacles identified in this study and policy-makers' preferences and needs are taken into account during its development and implementation.
Over the past few years, the RENARD research team has observed a sharp increase in the need for knowledge translation (KT) training. Given the high demand, it has been nearly impossible for the team ...to provide training entirely in person, and so a massive open online course (MOOC) was developed. Its aim is to promote the use and appropriation of the KT process by practitioners, decision-makers, and others in the public sphere. The goal of this study was to evaluate the MOOC by collecting users' opinions, reactions, appropriation, and practice changes. A qualitative research design was used. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews (n = 16) with professionals from Canada, France, and three West African countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal) who had taken the MOOC. All interviews were subjected to thematic content analysis. The MOOC content was generally appreciated and reused by the respondents. The results revealed one main motive for completing the course: the immediate opportunity to apply their learning in their practice environments. However, most respondents deplored the lack of interaction among learners and expressed the need for coaching with an instructor to deepen the topics covered during the course. The results also revealed connection and accessibility issues linked to the Internet network and unstable access to electricity in West African countries. The study highlights the potential of MOOCs for the acquisition of knowledge and competencies by KT professionals. Several recommendations and avenues of exploration were formulated to optimize and improve future designs of MOOCs on KT.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In 2009, Burkina Faso embarked on a process leading to the development of a national social protection policy (politique nationale de protection sociale-PNPS) in 2012. The objective of this study was ...to analyze the circumstances under which explicit knowledge was used to inform the process of emergence and formulation PNPS. The term explicit knowledge excludes tacit and experiential knowledge, taking into account research data, grey literature, and monitoring data. Court and Young's conceptual framework was adapted by integrating concepts from political science, such as Kingdon's Multiple Streams framework. Discursive and documentary data were collected from 30 respondents from national and international institutions. Thematic analysis guided the data processing. Results showed that use of peer-reviewed academic research was not explicitly mentioned by respondents, in contrast to other types of knowledge, such as national statistical data, reports on government program evaluations, and reports on studies by international institutions and NGOs, also called technical and financial partners (TFPs). The emergence phase was more informed by grey literature and monitoring data. In this phase, national actors deepened and increased their knowledge (conceptual use) on the importance and challenges of social protection. The role of explicit knowledge in the formulation phase was nuanced. The actors' thinking was little guided by the question of whether the solutions had the capacity to solve the problem in the Burkina Faso context. Choices were based very little on analysis of strategies (effectiveness, equity, unintended effects) and their applicability (cost, acceptability, feasibility). This way of working was due in part to actors' limited knowledge on social protection and the lack of government guidance on strategic choices. Strategic use was clearly identified. It involved citing knowledge (reports on studies conducted by TFPs) to justify the utility and feasibility of a PNPS. Instrumental use consisted of drawing from workshop presentations and study reports when writing sections of the PNPS. The consideration of a recommendation based on explicit knowledge was influenced by perceived political gains, i.e., potential social and political consequences.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract
There is a significant gap between researchers’ production of evidence and its use by policymakers. Several knowledge transfer strategies have emerged in the past years to promote the use of ...research. One of those strategies is the policy brief; a short document synthesizing the results of one or multiple studies. This scoping study aims to identify the use and effectiveness of policy briefs as a knowledge transfer strategy. Twenty-two empirical articles were identified, spanning 35 countries. Results show that policy briefs are considered generally useful, credible and easy to understand. The type of audience is an essential component to consider when writing a policy brief. Introducing a policy brief sooner rather than later might have a bigger impact since it is more effective in creating a belief rather than changing one. The credibility of the policy brief’s author is also a factor taken into consideration by decision-makers. Further research needs to be done to evaluate the various forms of uses of policy briefs by decision-makers.
Fire safety regulations impose very strict requirements on building design, especially for buildings built with combustible materials. It is believed that it is possible to improve the management of ...these regulations with a better integration of fire protection aspects in the building information modeling (BIM) approach. A new BIM-based domain is emerging, the automated code checking, with its growing number of dedicated approaches. However, only very few of these works have been dedicated to managing the compliance to fire safety regulations in timber buildings. In this paper, the applicability to fire safety in the Canadian context is studied by constituting and executing a complete method from the regulations text through code-checking construction to result analysis. A design science approach is used to propose a code-checking method with a detailed analysis of the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) in order to obtain the required information. The method starts by retrieving information from the regulation text, leading to a compliance check of an architectural building model. Then, the method is tested on a set of fire safety regulations and validated on a building model from a real project. The selected fire safety rules set a solid basis for further development of checking rules for the field of fire safety. This study shows that the main challenges for rule checking are the modeling standards and the elements’ required levels of detail. The implementation of the method was successful for geometrical as well as non-geometrical requirements, although further work is needed for more advanced geometrical studies, such as sprinkler or fire dampers positioning.
This qualitative study investigated the effectiveness of blended learning using MOOCs (massive open online courses) for capacity-building in knowledge translation (KT). The evaluation followed ...Kirkpatrick's updated model. A total of 23 semi-directed interviews were conducted with participants working at a research centre in Côte d'Ivoire, with a first wave of interviews immediately post-training and a second wave after five months. Results showed that the training met learners' needs, with both the content and teaching format being deemed appropriate. Learners reacted positively to face-to-face activities and affirmed the importance of coaching for putting learning into practice. Specific KT skills and principles appeared to have been acquired, such as a procedure for structuring the KT process and improved skills for communicating and presenting scientific knowledge. Five months after the training, encouraging changes were reported, but the sustainability of the new KT practices remained uncertain. KT capacity-building initiatives in low- and middle-income countries struggle to meet demand. Little is known about effective KT training in that context, and even less in non-anglophone countries. The study presented here contributes to the understanding of success factors from the learners' standpoint.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The evidence supporting the idea that natural disaster-related prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) influences the child’s development has been accumulating for several years. We conducted a ...meta-analytical review to quantify this effect on different spheres of child development: birth outcomes, cognitive, motor, physical, socio-emotional, and behavioral development. We systematically searched the literature for articles on this topic (2756 articles retrieved and 37 articles included in the systematic review), extracted the relevant data to calculate the effect sizes, and then performed a meta-analysis for each category of outcomes (30 articles included across the meta-analyses) and meta-regressions to determine the effect of some factors of interest on the association between PNMS and child development: type of PNMS (objective, psychological, cognitive, diet), type of natural disaster (ice storm, flood/cyclone), type of report (maternal, third-party observer, medical), timing of exposure (preconception exposure included or not) and child age at assessment (under 10 or 10 years and older). We found that PNMS significantly influences all spheres of child development. Higher PNMS levels were associated with longer gestational age, larger newborns, and higher BMI and adiposity levels, as well as worse cognitive, motor, socio-emotional, and behavioral outcomes.
IntroductionThe high prevalence of cannabis use and the potential for negative effects indicate the need for effective prevention strategies and treatment of people who use cannabis. Studies show ...that harm reduction (HR) in cannabis use is effective in minimising the harmful consequences of the substance. However, health professionals often misunderstand it and resist its adoption due to various obstacles. To our knowledge, there has been no review of the scientific literature on the factors that facilitate or hinder practitioners’ adoption of HR in cannabis use. To fill this gap, we aim to identify, through a scoping review, facilitators and barriers to healthcare providers’ adoption of HR in cannabis use in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.Methods and analysisOur methodology will be guided by the six-step model initially proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005). The search strategy will be executed on different databases (Medline, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science, Embase, Sociological Abstracts, Érudit, BASE, Google Web and Google Scholar) and will cover articles published between 1990 and October 2022. Empirical studies published in French or English in an OECD country and identifying factors that facilitate or hinder healthcare providers’ adoption of HR in cannabis use, will be included. Reference lists of the selected articles as well as relevant systematic reviews will be scanned to identify any missed publications by the electronic searches.Ethics and disseminationEthics approval is not required. The results will be disseminated through various activities (eg, publication in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, webinars and knowledge translation activities). The results will also allow us to conduct a future study aiming to develop and implement a knowledge translation process among healthcare practitioners working with youth in Quebec in order to enhance their adoption of HR in cannabis use.
Whether noncombustible or combustible construction is used, the presence of combustible materials is likely to be used for various reasons, such as interior finishes, flooring, and insulation. ...Consequently, how regulations consider the degree of combustibility in their fire classifications will influence the level of fire safety provided in these buildings and the exchanges between all actors in the construction sector. In North America, the regulation of combustibility is primarily governed by surface flame spread assessed through the Steiner tunnel test. While there is a growing prevalence of calorimetric methods globally, their incorporation into North American building codes remains notably limited. Based on ISO 5660-1 cone calorimeter test results of twenty commercially available North American building materials, a comparative study was conducted between the Canadian flame spread classification and the classifications in Japan, New Zealand and the European Union (Euroclass). The tests and their limitations are described herein, as well as the conceptual frameworks. The results suggest that as materials’ combustibility levels increase, the level of agreement between classifications decreases and remains binary. The choice between the material and system scales is crucial for determining the effective development and implementation of regulations.
A knowledge brokering (KB) intervention was implemented in Burkina Faso. By creating partnerships with health system actors in one district, the broker was expected to assess their knowledge needs, ...survey the literature to provide the most recent research evidence, produce various knowledge translation tools, and support them in using research to improve their actions. The purpose of this study was to analyze the key factors that influenced the KB project and to make recommendations for future initiatives.
The qualitative design involved a single case study in which the KB intervention implementation was evaluated retrospectively. Data came from interviews with the intervention team (n = 4) and with various actors involved in the intervention (n = 16). Data from formative evaluations conducted during the KB implementation and observation data from a two-month field mission were also used. Two conceptual frameworks were combined to guide the analysis: the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (Damschroder et al., 2009) and the Ecological Framework (Durlak & DuPre, 2008).
Various KB activities were conducted during the first two years of implementation at the local level. The project came to an early end following vain efforts to relocate the intervention at the central level in order to further influence the policy process. Certain shortcomings in the implementation team negatively influenced the implementation: inadequate leadership, no shared vision regarding the reorientation of the intervention, challenges related to the KB role, and lack of frank communications internally. Other impediments to the intervention's deployment included local actors' lack of decision-making authority, the unavailability of resources and of organizational incentives for involvement in the KB intervention, and contextual challenges in accessing the central level. However, the KB strategy presented several strengths: collaborative development, support provided to local partners by the broker, and training opportunities and support provided to the broker.
More attention must be paid to intervention planning, partners' engagement, human, financial and technical resources availability, continuous development of skills and of communications within the KB team, and periodic assessment of potential obstacles related to the complexity of the system within which the intervention has been implemented. Using implementation science frameworks when developing KB strategies in the West African context should be promoted.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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