Table 1 Comparison of knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) activities and community-based research (CBR) methods/community-based organization (CBO) initiatives for linking research evidence to action

Fostering a culture that supports research use

▪ Some funders require ongoing 'linkage and exchange' (i.e., producers and users of research evidence work collaboratively on proposal development and research conduct) (e.g., the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation).

▪ CBR projects may use community advisory committees to engage community members in guiding the research process and the dissemination of the results.

▪ Trusted researchers or knowledge brokers periodically highlight the value of research evidence (e.g., highlighting positive examples of research use in practice or decision-making).

▪ Some conferences that address issues of community interest develop strategies to include community members (e.g., Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) in the U.S.).

▪ Some funders provide grants for linking research evidence to action.

▪ Community members often play the role of co-principal investigator in CBR, which helps to foster a sense of leadership, responsibility, and ownership of the research.

Production of research to key target audiences

▪ Some funders engage in priority setting with key target audiences to ensure that systematic reviews and primary research address relevant questions (e.g., the Listening for Direction priority setting process for health services and policy research from the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation) [60].

▪ Some CBR funders and intermediary organizations periodically organize multi-stakeholder 'think tanks' to develop a research agenda through consensus.

▪ Some funders commission scoping reviews or rapid assessments of the literature to identify important gaps for targeted research funding.

▪ CBOs, researchers, research funders, and government periodically form task forces related to specific areas of interest for the purpose of coordinating action on community generated research agendas.

▪ Some researchers involve members of the target audiences in the research process.

▪ CBR requires partnerships between researchers and community during all phases in the research process in order to ensure relevance and sensitivity to community concerns.

▪ Some networks of systematic review producers commit to updating them regularly (e.g., the Cochrane Collaboration).

▪ Some CBR funders offer 'enabling' or 'seed' grants to assist in question identification, partnership development and protocol development.

Activities to link research to action

   'Push'

▪ Some organizations provide email updates that highlight actionable messages from relevant and high quality systematic reviews (e.g., SUPPORT summaries) [83].

▪ Some organizations or associations develop websites/databases and listservs dedicated to highlighting research originating in and undertaken through community-university partnerships (e.g., CCPH).

▪ Researchers, funders or knowledge brokers will periodically engage in capacity building and consultations with research users to enhance their ability to undertake evidence-informed push efforts that meet the needs of their target audiences.

▪ Researchers, funders or knowledge brokers sometimes disseminate fact sheets or newsletters to highlight results from specific studies or about a specific topic of interest (e.g., The Ontario HIV Treatment Network in Canada and CCPH in the U.S.).

▪ CBR partners often initiate community forums to present research results.

▪ Academic (and increasingly community) partners involved with CBR often present at conferences and publish in journals.

Facilitating 'pull'

▪ Some groups provide 'one stop shopping' websites that provide user-friendly and high quality systematic reviews relevant to specific target audiences (e.g., Health Systems Evidence)[84].

▪ Some CBR projects develop websites to profile their research evidence and provide resources that they have produced as part of their research (e.g. the Positive Spaces Healthy Spaces housing project in Canada) [85].

▪ Researchers, funders or knowledge brokers sometimes undertake capacity building with key target audiences to help better acquire, assess, adapt, and apply research evidence (e.g., WHO sponsored workshops to help policymakers find and use research evidence).

▪ Some organizations or associations develop websites/databases and listservs dedicated to highlighting research originating in and undertaken through community-university partnerships (e.g., CCPH).

▪ Some funders of CBR offer capacity-building resources to bring together community stakeholders for skill-building activities.

   'Pull'

▪ Some research users will design prompts in the decision-making to support research use

▪ Some CBOs incorporate prompts to research evidence into their strategic goals or values (i.e., incorporating organizational structures/processes for using evidence).

▪ Some research users will conduct self-assessments of their capacity to acquire, assess, adapt, and apply research and engage in capacity building activities in these areas.

   'Exchange'

▪ Researchers and research users build partnerships and work collaboratively in setting research priorities, conducting research and linking research to action.

▪ CBR methods and CBR funders require partnerships between researchers and community during all phases in research in order to ensure its relevance (i.e., topics and outcomes measured) and sensitivity to community concerns and to facilitate eventual use of the results (e.g., specific funding calls from the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada).

Evaluation

▪ Some researchers and research funders evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts (i.e., one or more of the activities outlined above) for linking research evidence to action.

▪ CBR projects sometimes engage target audiences in reflection processes about the specific impacts the project had (e.g., was quality of life enhanced? If so, how?)