A previous Treehouse piece explored Decolonizing Data Analysis Methods which explored various methods to approach data analysis from an Indigenous perspective with learnings from the Making it Work Project. In this resource, we continue the discussion with some ways to communicate out findings by discussing different approaches to knowledge translation. According to Canadian Institutes of Health Research, knowledge translation is a dynamic and iterative process that involves synthesizing, disseminating, exchanging, and ethically applying knowledge to improve health, services, and the healthcare system. It’s about bridging the gap between research and practice, ensuring that research findings are used to inform policy, practice, and further research.
Making it Work was an Indigenous-focused, community-based research project that used an Indigenized ‘realist evaluation’ approach. This involved adapting the traditional realist evaluation processes through Indigenous approaches such as Two-Eyed Seeing and Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Doing. This resulted in a program theory which explores an in-depth look at community-based programs and services, showing not just how programs can be successful, but exploring how and why these programs and services work for people living with HIV, hepatitis C and other associated and complex social and health issues face in accessing program and services.
A lot of learnings came out of the study – including new methodologies and research findings. There are many considerations to be made to best share out these diverse findings to best fit the needs of different audiences.
When developing knowledge translation products from research it is important to consider your audience. We’d like to share this resource from Chris Lysy, a digital strategy consultant. He notes that it is important to know your audience. We often try to make a knowledge translation product that can be
useful for multiple audiences (like a report) which can get overwhelming and end up not being useful. Instead, he suggests starting by breaking it down by audience types. The first is the high interest audience, who are highly invested in the details of the work. Second, is medium term interest audience who are interested, but not in all the details of the work. Lastly, is the causal audience who may not be aware of your work or don’t have as much time to engage in the work where high-level findings would be more appropriate.
Below, we share the different types of knowledge translation products we developed or are developing for the Making it Work project to meet the needs of our diverse audiences.
Reports, Infographics and Posters: For Making it Work, we developed different versions of the final report to be used for different audiences’ engagement levels. We developed a Full Research Report for those who want to deeply engage with the methodology, program theory and survey results, a Community Research Summary with higher level findings and methodology summaries, and an Infographic with Main Research Findings for those who want a brief one-pager of the research findings. Posters were shared at conferences throughout the project as well which can be found here.
Knowledge Sharing Events: Making It Work organized fun events for sharing the project at each case study site. Crafting inspired many heartfelt conversations around the main themes of the project. Food was also shared and although each community were unique from each other, the main themes of the project continued to appear. It was important to give this knowledge back to the communities that contributed to the study first, before sharing out to larger audiences as a large part of the project focused on relationships and reciprocity. A blog post on the events and their impact was shared can be viewed here.
Video and Fact Sheets: We wanted to provide an audio/visual knowledge sharing piece to reach audiences who want to engage with the storytelling aspect of the project. The video explores the theme of storytelling and includes study participants sharing their experiences with the findings. The video can be found here. Fact sheets are being developed to reach audiences further beyond organizations. These fact sheets will highlight study findings that are important for municipalities and health authorities.
Published Papers: We are currently developing an academic paper that will explore the methods of the Making it Work project in detail. This will be best suited for the academic audience to help them understand how we did this work and apply these findings in their own work
Guidebook: The Guidebook is in development and has an advisory board of PWLLE, study team 
members and public health students. It is meant to challenge, encourage, and inspire action towards systematic change through providing areas of guidance and examples to help organizations and service providers to implement study findings. This is a very exciting time for the Making Work Project to share findings from data collection and to provide information that is actionable in the Guidebook, this is a unique approach, as this Guidebook hopes to move its readers into action in a way that helps to remove barriers they may have previously had when approaching decolonization.
For more information from Chris Lysy, you can visit his website here.
Questions? Feedback? Get in touch!
This post was prepared for PAN’s Research and Evaluation Treehouse by:
Edi Young, Peer Research Associate and
Leanne Zubowski, Research and Evaluation Specialist, [email protected]