Beyond Dissemination and Implementation Research: Integrating Evidence and Action

The Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation (CBRPE), funded by the Canadian Cancer Society, is building a Canadian enterprise that helps prevent disease at a population level by better integrating evidence and action.

The real world, not the literature, is our primary reference point. Our premise is that the major (social/behavioural) experiments in disease prevention will not be done by researchers, but by social actors (e.g., leaders in policy, program, advocacy, and social mobilization). They have policy levers, resources, and influence required to effect novel, sustainable population level interventions.

These social actors shaped our plans. They indicated CBRPE could add most value by helping to accelerate the generation and use of evidence in developing and implementing effective population health interventions. They recommended “specializing in evaluation science to generate contextually sensitive practice-based evidence and related research methods (given the dearth and critical importance of such evidence).”

We are building capacity to study “natural experiments” as innovative policies and programs are implemented. The goal is to learn as we go what works, for whom, in what context, at what cost, thus enabling ongoing learning and improvement. This necessitates building a) teams spanning research and policy/program sectors, to jointly plan, do and act on, pertinent studies, and b) data systems that enable integration of research, evaluation, policy and practice. Despite challenges, momentum is building. Progress would be facilitated by systemic change in research funding and academic reward structures to enable learning from innovation.

Speaker: Roy Cameron, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Centre for Behavioral Research and Program Evaluation
Canadian Cancer Society / University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada