Grant: Knowledge Synthesis Grant - PA: Improve Health and Health Equity

One of the most pressing concerns for public authorities responsible for the population's health is how to plan, implement and evaluate public health interventions (PHIs) using the best research evidence available. Researchers have used various methods to summarize and synthesize the research evidence for policy and decision-makers; however, the most popular and accepted methods for carrying out these syntheses have tended to exclude forms of evidence that address more complex public health problems and their potential solutions. A form of evidence that is difficult to fit within the more orthodox synthesis approaches are theoretical frameworks for understanding how PHIs work. This project aims to use a recently developed method for synthesizing evidence, meta-narrative synthesis, to look at a variety of theoretical frameworks that use the concept of 'complexity science' to help explain and understand the social processes and systems that form the constantly evolving environment within which public health interventions have to adapt. Because this knowledge synthesis is aimed at directly informing the policy process, the research team is made up of university researchers and knowledge users. The methodology employed is explicitly a participatory action research approach to meta-narrative synthesis, wherein repeated cycles of reflection and action will take place, that combine synthesis of the evidence base with feedback from knowledge users as to the practical utility of the synthesis results for informing the policy process. The main expected outcome is to develop a framework for knowledge users responsible for developing policy for PHIs. This framework will guide policy and decision-makers in how to apply the perspective of complexity science to planning, implementing and evaluating PHIs. This will allow knowledge users to integrate a complexity perspective into a process of continuous improvement in relation to policy action on public health interventions.