Research projects with short funding periods, as well as policy making in political environments, often face challenges in sustaining the continuity of development tasks. To overcome this, the REPOPA project (Research into Policy to Enhance Physical Activity) has initiated a networking structure with international and national levels to provide support to researchers and policy makers in their communication and networking. We have learnt from Canada, where structures such as learning networks have produced encouraging results.

‘CHNet-Works!’ is an online, informal, national network of researchers, decision makers and practitioners in health and other sectors (Edwards & Kothari, 2004). This structure has been operational for over a decade, and has reached thousands with as many as 200 individuals joining individual webinars. The webinars provide an interactive venue to share cutting-edge research and its application. The Best Brains Exchange and deliberative dialogues are another example. These bring together researchers and decision makers to consider how research evidence can be used to address public policy issues (Lavis et al. 2014; Moat et al., 2013). Importantly, the issues, requiring timely input, are posed by decision makers.

REPOPA mission

The overall aim of REPOPA is to integrate research knowledge with real-life policy making. The central concept is evidence-informed policy making (EIPM). This means policy making that is informed by research evidence and at the same time builds upon ‘other kinds of contextual evidence’ such as community values and priorities, resources and knowhow of local actors. These are informed by the sociocultural setting of the policy in question (Aro et al 2015). The project focused on the use of evidence and studied it using different methodologies, but also tried to facilitate and increase the communication and collaboration between different stakeholders: policy makers, academia, non-governmental and public officials mainly in five REPOPA partner countries.

EIPM platforms

The possibility to explore the development of networks and country-specific platforms, developed according to country contexts, and opportunities for exchange of research evidence, policy making and practice have been essential to the project. Each platform is supported online under the REPOPA website (www.repopa.eu ), as an international evidence-informed policy making umbrella platform (EIPM umbrella platform). This has allowed partner countries to follow two proposed scenarios: to search for existing local, regional, or national level in-country working groups or task forces that have an interest in policy making to enhance physical activity and join their group; or to develop one in-country work group or task force that has an interest in policy making to enhance physical activity. Specifically, each partner country has chosen the most sustainable and productive way to act.

The web-based platform has so far encouraging results. The national platform in Finland was a working group on ‘Access to physical activity and sports information’ within the Ministry of Education and Culture. In Denmark, the platform was established as an interest group called ‘Research into Practice and Policy in Public Health’ under the National Public Health Association. In the Netherlands, the interest was to strengthen already existing Dutch platforms on intersectoral policy making and evidence-informed policy making by connecting them to the REPOPA platform. In Italy, the aim of the platform was to connect stakeholders with interested parties in evidence-informed policy making in cross-sectors, including science policy. In Romania, REPOPA joined an existing working group at the local level, ‘Cluj Management and Planning Group’, as part of their public health task force, which contributed to the development of the new Cluj-Napoca Development Strategy health component.

In order to gain international exposure and become connected with existing networks and platforms, the Twitter account is used as a tool for discussions and a website integrated discussion box, similar to a forum, to share information and tools on evidence-informed policy making.

Conclusion

In the nexus of project-based academic research and the constantly changing policy making environment, sustainable collaboration structures are needed. Evidence-informed policy making platforms developed in the REPOPA project offer a feasible structure without additional resources.

Project details

The results of each REPOPA subproject will be presented at the final project meeting in Brussels on 8 September 2016.

The REPOPA project is from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme and began on 1 October 2011, running until 30 September 2016. The total budget is €3m, of which 25% of the research, technology and development work is co-funded by the partner institutions. The evidence-informed policy making umbrella platform is maintained by the Romanian partner, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj School of Public Health.

References:

¹ Edwards, N, & Kothari, A (2004) CHNET-Works! A Networking infrastructure for Community Health Nurse Researchers and Decision-Makers. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 36(4), 203-207.

² Lavis, JN, Boyko JA, & Gauvin FP (2014) Evaluating deliberative dialogues focused on healthy public policy. BMC Public Health, 14:1287.

³ Moat, KA, Lavis, JN, Clancy, SJ, El-Jardali, F, Pantoja, T, & the Knowledge Translation Platform Evaluation study team (2013) Evidence briefs and deliberative dialogues: perceptions and intentions to act on what was learnt. Bulletin of the World Health Organization; 92:20-28.

⁴ Aro, AR, Bertram, M, Hämäläinen, RM, Van De Goor, I, Skovgaard, T, et al (2015) Integrating research evidence and physical activity policy making – REPOPA project. Health Promotion International, February 10, 2015; 1-10.

Arja R Aro, PhD, DSc, Professor of Public Health
Project Co-ordinator
Unit for Health Promotion Research
University of Southern Denmark
+45 6550 4157
+45 6011 1874
araro@health.sdu.dk
http://www.sdu.dk/ansat/araro
http://www.repopa.eu
@ProjectREPOPA

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