
If you have spent any time baking, you have likely noticed that there is typically a core set of ingredients that appear in most recipes, like eggs, milk, and flour. These same ingredients can create something elaborate, like a multi-tier cake, or something simple, like a chocolate chip cookie. Regardless, they always come together to make something delicious. Sharing evidence is not so different. Whether advocating for new ministerial policy to address a gap in the healthcare field, or simply creating an infographic to build awareness about research within a local community, impactful knowledge sharing typically includes activities that share the same common ingredients, regardless of the scale. They identify a gap in practice or knowledge, present the evidence that can fill the gap, engage the audience who may have expertise on, or be impacted by, the gap, and finally, provide support or recommendations to use the evidence available.
Knowledge mobilization (KM) activities, which are activities designed to spread and apply evidence, can be designed in many ways and on scales large and small to meet these goals. Consider the newly launched Pediatric Pain Management national health standard for Canada (available for download here). This health standard, developed in Canada by Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP) in partnership with the Health Standards Organization (HSO), is the first in the world to provide standards for the delivery of pediatric pain management, and provides recommendations for how health care partners of all types can provide care for children’s pain. It was developed through collaboration between individuals with clinical expertise and lived experience, and considered the available literature and existing evidence-based pain management practices for managing children’s pain. Not only is this health standard a key to improving care for Canadian youth who experience pain (e.g., acute pain from medical procedures, illness, injury, as well as chronic pain), but it also serves as a prime example of good practice in KM.
This health standard is an example of a KM activity that has the four “ingredients” mentioned above. Firstly, it clearly identifies a gap in practice, given that children continue to experience undermanaged pain despite the wealth of evidence available to inform evidence-based practices in pediatric pain, as was recognized in the 2021 Lancet Child and Adolescent Health Commission. These goals clearly outline the need to make children’s pain matter, understood, visible, and better. This leads to the second ingredient, which is the organization and presentation of relevant evidence. The health standard is organized around the goals stated in the Lancet Commission and provides specific standards and recommendations around how to best manage children’s pain based on empirical evidence. For example, when addressing the goal of making pain matter, the standard provides a framework for pediatric pain management. Thirdly, the generation of these standards, though directly informed by evidence, included the perspective of the target audience; that is, those who would potentially be impacted by the health standard. The health standard was developed by a working group of advisors with policy expertise, persons with lived experience (i.e., patients, caregivers, and family members who have experience with children’s pain), policy makers, and knowledge users (i.e., those who use evidence in their practice within children’s pain). The inclusion of a broad range of perspectives, such as those seen in the case of the health standard, is essential to ensure the best evidence is captured and represented in such an output. Perhaps even more importantly, is that capturing these perspectives can ensure that the type of evidence included, and how it is presented, is relevant to those who may need it. This ultimately will make it easier for a KM resource like a health standard to be adopted into practice, because what it addresses and recommends is relevant to the context. This leads to the last ingredient: support. Creating a KM resource such as a health standard is significant accomplishment; implementing something like this, however, is a different matter. Research shows that knowledge users not only want to know what the evidence is, but how they can use it. Thus, the inclusion of resources and strategies within the health standard document are an essential element to support individuals who plan to adopt these standards into practice. For example, the standard not only provides evidence around the importance of assessing pain, but also a resource to inform how pain is assessed and reassessed are provided. This is critical to support the implementation of evidence.
KM activities such as this one are extensive, labour intensive, and complex; however, it provides an excellent example of what high-quality evidence sharing looks like on the highest of levels. At its core, however, it includes the same key ingredients that any KM activity should have. Indeed, the components discussed in the case of a national health standard are no different from what any of us can accomplish individually: present the gap, share the evidence, engage those who can relate, and provide ideas around how the evidence can be used. When we make the effort to share knowledge with these key ingredients, effective knowledge sharing is possible and will almost certainly give “rise” to impact and change.