A broad range of methodologies is routinely employed to track and analyse use of research evidence in public policymaking. However, available methods and tools are mostly equipped to track 'evidence' but are less equipped to capture and represent 'use' of evidence. In particular, existing methods overlook policymakers' frequent use of evidence for…

It is widely agreed that the availability of high quality evidence does not translate readily into influence over policy decisions. This insight has generated long-running debates about the most effective way to 'bridge the gap' between policy research and policymaking, and to increase policy research 'uptake'. The proposed remedies (for example,…

Obesity prevention is an urgent public health priority that requires action at multiple levels. Collaboration between academics, policy and practice is necessary to ensure best-practice implementation. A national knowledge translation and exchange (KT) platform, the Collaboration of Community-based Obesity Prevention Sites (CO-OPS), was delivered…

The use of robust research findings in public health policy has been strongly encouraged for bridging the evidence-policy gap. To assess and further promote evidence uptake, understanding how research evidence is being used by decision makers is very important. This systematic review examined primary studies exploring the use of research evidence…

Evidence reviews, commonly confused with literature reviews, are a crucial method not only for collating and synthesising the evidence base, but also for determining what the quality of previous evidence is and extracting the most amount of value from previous studies using systematic techniques. The paper focuses on the use of evidence reviews to…

Knowledge co-production is a solution-oriented approach to analysing real-life problems such as making the right decision in a given scenario. The most popular examples come from evidence-based policymaking contexts. Political decisions made in this way rely on specialist expertise co-produced in organisations that can be characterised as Hybrid…

There is continuing interest in using the best available research evidence to inform public health policy. However, all too often efforts to do so rely on mechanistic and unrealistic views of the process by which public policy is made. As a result, traditional dyadic knowledge translation (KT) approaches may not be particularly effective when…

Introduction: The appropriate role of evidence in health policy decision making is controversial and requires more data on how decisions are actually made. Option B+ is a strategy to prevent mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV that involves starting pregnant, HIV-positive women on triple drug antiretroviral therapy (ART) and continuing for…

This is a follow-up study to Reid et al (2017) which considered the barriers and facilitators of getting knowledge into policy when using a knowledge brokering approach. The previous study analysed the use of strategies to reduce barriers to the use of evidence in mental health strategy planning in Scotland using outcome frameworks. The main…

Historically, Aboriginal health research in Australia has been non-participatory, misrepresentative, and has produced few measurable improvements to community health. The Study of Environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health (SEARCH) was established to co-create and co-translate research. Over the past decade, SEARCH has built a…

A large national technical assistance (TA) centre in the US provides TA to Head Start regions to help strengthen their use of implementation science frameworks. In administration of TA to regions, the centre has used a 'co-creation' model. Aims and objectives: This paper describes the co-creative TA approach, including level of dosage (frequency…

The language of co-creation has become popular with policy makers, researchers and consultants wanting to support evidence-based change. However, there is little agreement about what features a research or consultancy project must have for peers to recognise the project as co-creative, and therefore for it to contribute to the growing body of…

Biomedical research policy in many countries has adopted the principle of active involvement in research. However, how different approaches to involvement such as patient and public involvement/engagement (PPIE), qualitative research, participatory research, co-design and co-production sit alongside each other, is contentious and unclear. There…

The extensive literature on research co-creation is mostly based on problems being treated as clearly defined and solvable. What is the impact on co-creation when problems are complex, with the following characteristics: difficult to delimit, contested definitions, multiple uncertainties and unresolvable unknowns, constraints on what can be done,…

In many parts of the world, governments are building new platforms, methods, and innovative experimental spaces to better respond to current complex problems. Laboratories in the public sector have emerged as experimental spaces that incorporate co-creation approaches to promote public innovation and social transformation. Although there is…