Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Policy makers and mangers need to identify effective knowledge translation programs to improve the quality and outcomes of care for people in their care. Increasing, there are a substantial number of studies testing different programs to improve quality and outcomes of care for people with diverse health conditions. Systematic reviews summarise all the available evidence to support decisions by policy makers and managers. Unfortunately the information provided by systematic reviews is incomplete on accont of missing information from published studies being summarized. We have completed a systematic review of knowledge translation programs to improve the quality and outcomes of care for people with diabetes. We identified 142 randomised controlled trials. Unfortunately using current methods and published data, we are often only able to make general recommendations for policy makers and managers about which knowledge translation programs to use. In the proposed study we will evaluate the usefulness of contacting authors of original studies as an approach to garner more meaningful information from primary studies. The resulting information should be of direct relevance to policy makers and managers developing knowledge translation programs to improve the quality and outcomes people in need of healthcare. In addition, we will generate further knowledge about the value of these new methods.