The Missing Voice: Bridging Research and Real-World Care

Successfully sharing & acting on research findings depends on active partnerships with the implementers – patients, caregivers, & their clinician partners.

Summary

The 2024 Academy Health Dissemination & Implementation (D&I) Science Conference revealed a significant gap between researchers and implementers (patients, caregivers, and their clinician partners). While D&I science studies how to share and apply research findings effectively, the conference highlighted that implementers—the very people meant to use these findings—were largely absent. Through interviews with attendees, key barriers emerged: high conference costs, lack of deliberate outreach, and content primarily designed for researchers. A compelling example from Ghana demonstrated successful implementation through radio drama and community health workers, suggesting that effective D&I requires meeting people where they are, both literally and figuratively.

Full 32-minute podcast episode, The Missing Voice: Bridging Research and Real-World Care here: https://health-hats.com/pod229

Everything Health Hats here: https://linktr.ee/healthhats