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

Not using the best available evidence is common in the field of child health. Past research has found that as many as 4 in 10 children receive care that is not based on latest evidence and that 1 in 4 may receive care that may even be harmful. Knowledge Translation (KT) is often used to help move this research into practice. Yet, in child health and beyond, we still experience challenges to close this gap between what we know and what we do. It has long been thought that developing partnerships between those who produce and those who use research is the solution, as it ensures we ask research questions that are important to those who have to apply it. This joint way of conducting research, called integrated KT, is in its early scientific days with several important gaps that remain. No studies have looked at whether integrated KT efforts are working or not. Also, many of these studies measure and report differently on their interaction with end-users, making it difficult to compare and summarize the effects of research. The long-term goal of this project is to improve our understanding of how well integrated KT projects have worked to date in the field of child health, understand researchers and end-users experiences with practicing integrated KT, and to engage in and learn from an applied integrated KT project. The secondary goal of this research will be to measure baseline pediatric readiness of facilities across Manitoba and assess barriers and facilitators to achieving readiness status using an applied integrated KT approach.