Preventing Childhood Obesity - Evidence Policy and Practice.pdf

CHAPTER 22
Knowledge t ranslation and e xchange for
o besity p revention
Rebecca Armstrong, 1 Lauren Prosser, 1 Maureen Dobbins 2 and Elizabeth Waters 1
1 Jack Brockoff Child Health and Wellbeing Program, McCaughey Centre, Melbourne
School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
2 School of Nursing and Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster
University, Hamilton, Canada
Summary and recommendations
for research and practice
• Knowledge translation and exchange (KTE) processes
are intended to facilitate the creation and
application of knowledge.
• To best support obesity prevention knowledge
translation and exchange processes need to involve
governments, communities (including children and
their parents), practitioners and researchers who are
holders of implicit and explicit knowledge.
• Tools and strategies are available to support the
many purposes of KTE.
• Refl ection on the application of KTE tools and strategies
is necessary, in order to build the research
evidence in this area and to support evidence -
informed approaches to obesity prevention.
Introduction
As discussed in previous chapters, the need for an
evidence - informed approach to obesity prevention is
challenging but essential. Using research evidence in
decision-making processes is often termed “evidencebased
practice ” , stemming from the principles of
Preventing Childhood Obesity. Edited by
E. Waters, B.A. Swinburn, J.C. Seidell and R. Uauy.
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing.
evidence - based medicine ( EBM ). EBM typically
involves the “ conscientious, explicit, and judicious use
of current best evidence in making decisions about the
care of individual patients ”. 1 In more recent times,
and in domains such as public health where research
evidence is more complex, the term “ evidence -
2
informed ” has been favoured. Evidence-informed
decisions should be “ better matched to the context of
application, more efficiently implemented, and more
widely acceptable. ”3 While EBM has an implied
emphasis on research evidence forming the basis
of decision making, “evidence-informed” decision
making more clearly acknowledges that public health
decisions are often informed by research evidence in
combination with a range of alternative sources and
influences. 4
Obesity prevention is likely to be best supported
with the use of multi - sectoral approaches across multiple
disciplines. The challenge for obesity prevention
is that interventions are facilitated through policies at
the national, state/provincial, regional and local level.
This necessarily involves the generation and synthesis
of existing research evidence in combination with
practitioner expertise, policy imperatives and community
experiences. Given the number of key stakeholders
involved in this trajectory between knowledge
generation, synthesis and use, “ knowledge translation
and exchange ” has become particularly important.
The process of knowledge translation and exchange is
thus, extremely complex. Initially it was believed that
evidence - informed decision making could be achieved
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