Strategic Objective #3 - To get needed research into the hands of health system managers and policy makers in the right format, at the right time, through the right channels

An innovator of Research Dissemination

All the informative research evidence in the world can’t make a difference unless it gets into the hands of the people who make decisions. Beyond disseminating evidence, the Foundation also promotes innovative ways to ensure the evidence is presented to decision makers in a format that is easily-understood and useful, and that it is delivered in a timely way.

Taking the Mystery Out of Mythbusters: The Mythbusters Teaching Resource

The Foundation has long been lauded for its novel series of research summaries. One of the Foundation’s flagship publications, Mythbusters, reveals research evidence that is contrary to accepted wisdom in Canadian healthcare debates.

Inspired by the series, professors at several universities have contacted the Foundation to ask for guidance on how to teach summary-writing to their students. These requests, coupled with the ever-increasing popularity of the Mythbusters series, drove the creation of the Mythbusters Teaching Resource in 2008. The resource, a 30-page document available on the Foundation’s website, provides a step-by-step breakdown of the Mythbusters model. It helps instructors teach students how to acquire the skills needed to produce actionable summaries for policy makers, planners, managers, and providers.

Yukiko Asada is one of the professors who embraced the Mythbusters model. She developed a Mythbusters assignment for the health services systems course offered at Dalhousie University’s master’s program in community health and epidemiology.

“The assignment is designed to help students understand what it means to say evidence exists, and how to communicate their knowledge with a bright, interested, but not necessarily research-trained person,” says Prof. Asada. “The Mythbusters Teaching Resource is a learning and teaching package containing various skills that we currently value in the Canadian health services research and policy community.”

Together with Prof. Asada and her Dalhousie University graduate students, the Foundation in 2008 launched a social networking pilot – a private website designed to complement the Mythbusters Teaching Resource.

Other milestones...

The Mythbusters series continues to be the Foundation’s most popular and influential knowledge summaries. Both PBS Frontline and Associated Press in the U.S. requested Mythbusters for their election packages on healthcare issues. As well, information reflected in the series was presented at two international conferences, in the Netherlands and in Ireland, and one issue of Mythbusters was translated into Spanish for the Madrid Public Health Agency.
Mythbusters also remains a valuable tool in classrooms, used in a number of graduate courses. Two issues of Mythbusters were released in 2008.
Two issues of the Mythbusters companion piece, Evidence Boost, were published in 2008. One of these issues was reprinted in the Canadian journal, Healthcare Policy.
In 2008, the Foundation launched the first-ever Mythbusters Award, open to students of Canadian universities. The award is designed to provide students with the opportunity to prepare a user-friendly summary of the research evidence behind some of today’s major debates in Canadian health services management and policy. The first award will be presented in May 2009 at the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research conference.
Insight and Action, a digest that aims to share knowledge about knowledge exchange, was re-launched to provide a more comprehensive summary. Twenty-one issues were produced in 2008, with new issues addressing such hard-hitting questions as: Is the News Media a Reliable Source for Sharing Research Results? and Measuring the Impact of Research: What do we know? The new Insight and Action undergoes an expert review and is widely distributed across Canada, Australia, and the U.K.
Promising Practices in Research Use issued a call for nominations of potential “promising practices” to be profiled. The call attracted many applications and resulted in four new installments of the series in 2008. The series highlights healthcare organizations that have invested time, energy, and resources to improve their ability to use research. To date, the series has 19 stories and continues to enjoy a steady growth in distribution. Over the past two years, select issues of the series have also been reprinted in Healthcare Policy.
The Building the Case for Quality initiative, launched in 2007, provides an ideal opportunity to disseminate evidence on quality in new ways, using contemporary tactics. Several online video podcasts and stories have been featured on the Foundation’s website. Materials were presented at a number of key conferences in 2008.
Foundation staff published four columns in Healthcare Quarterly in 2008:
- Healthy Healthcare Workplaces: Improving the Health and Work Environments of Professionals
- Myths, “Zombies” and “Damned Lies” Plague Canadian Healthcare Systems: What’s a Researcher to Do?
- Ready, Set... Collaborate? The Evidence Says ‘Go,’ So What’s Slowing Adoption of Inter-professional Collaboration in Primary Healthcare?
- Public Reporting: One Piece of the Quality
  Improvement Puzzle

Print Ready Français
Governance 2008-2009 Board of Trustees and Committee Members Letter from the Chair, Board of Trustees Letter from the President and Chief Executive Officer The Cornerstones of Innovation Incubation Strategic Objective #1 Strategic Objective #2 Strategic Objective #3 Strategic Objective #4 EXTRA Researcher on Call A Model of Organizational Excellence Accountability Endowment and Financial Management Statement of Financial Position Statement of Operations	Strategic Objective #3 - To get needed research into the hands of health system managers and policy makers in the right format, at the right time, through the right channels An innovator of Research Dissemination All the informative research evidence in the world can’t make a difference unless it gets into the hands of the people who make decisions. Beyond disseminating evidence, the Foundation also promotes innovative ways to ensure the evidence is presented to decision makers in a format that is easily-understood and useful, and that it is delivered in a timely way. Taking the Mystery Out of Mythbusters: The Mythbusters Teaching Resource The Foundation has long been lauded for its novel series of research summaries. One of the Foundation’s flagship publications, Mythbusters, reveals research evidence that is contrary to accepted wisdom in Canadian healthcare debates. Inspired by the series, professors at several universities have contacted the Foundation to ask for guidance on how to teach summary-writing to their students. These requests, coupled with the ever-increasing popularity of the Mythbusters series, drove the creation of the Mythbusters Teaching Resource in 2008. The resource, a 30-page document available on the Foundation’s website, provides a step-by-step breakdown of the Mythbusters model. It helps instructors teach students how to acquire the skills needed to produce actionable summaries for policy makers, planners, managers, and providers. Yukiko Asada is one of the professors who embraced the Mythbusters model. She developed a Mythbusters assignment for the health services systems course offered at Dalhousie University’s master’s program in community health and epidemiology. “The assignment is designed to help students understand what it means to say evidence exists, and how to communicate their knowledge with a bright, interested, but not necessarily research-trained person,” says Prof. Asada. “The Mythbusters Teaching Resource is a learning and teaching package containing various skills that we currently value in the Canadian health services research and policy community.” Together with Prof. Asada and her Dalhousie University graduate students, the Foundation in 2008 launched a social networking pilot – a private website designed to complement the Mythbusters Teaching Resource. Other milestones... The Mythbusters series continues to be the Foundation’s most popular and influential knowledge summaries. Both PBS Frontline and Associated Press in the U.S. requested Mythbusters for their election packages on healthcare issues. As well, information reflected in the series was presented at two international conferences, in the Netherlands and in Ireland, and one issue of Mythbusters was translated into Spanish for the Madrid Public Health Agency. Mythbusters also remains a valuable tool in classrooms, used in a number of graduate courses. Two issues of Mythbusters were released in 2008. Two issues of the Mythbusters companion piece, Evidence Boost, were published in 2008. One of these issues was reprinted in the Canadian journal, Healthcare Policy. In 2008, the Foundation launched the first-ever Mythbusters Award, open to students of Canadian universities. The award is designed to provide students with the opportunity to prepare a user-friendly summary of the research evidence behind some of today’s major debates in Canadian health services management and policy. The first award will be presented in May 2009 at the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research conference. Insight and Action, a digest that aims to share knowledge about knowledge exchange, was re-launched to provide a more comprehensive summary. Twenty-one issues were produced in 2008, with new issues addressing such hard-hitting questions as: Is the News Media a Reliable Source for Sharing Research Results? and Measuring the Impact of Research: What do we know? The new Insight and Action undergoes an expert review and is widely distributed across Canada, Australia, and the U.K. Promising Practices in Research Use issued a call for nominations of potential “promising practices” to be profiled. The call attracted many applications and resulted in four new installments of the series in 2008. The series highlights healthcare organizations that have invested time, energy, and resources to improve their ability to use research. To date, the series has 19 stories and continues to enjoy a steady growth in distribution. Over the past two years, select issues of the series have also been reprinted in Healthcare Policy. The Building the Case for Quality initiative, launched in 2007, provides an ideal opportunity to disseminate evidence on quality in new ways, using contemporary tactics. Several online video podcasts and stories have been featured on the Foundation’s website. Materials were presented at a number of key conferences in 2008. Foundation staff published four columns in Healthcare Quarterly in 2008: Healthy Healthcare Workplaces: Improving the Health and Work Environments of Professionals Myths, “Zombies” and “Damned Lies” Plague Canadian Healthcare Systems: What’s a Researcher to Do? Ready, Set... Collaborate? The Evidence Says ‘Go,’ So What’s Slowing Adoption of Inter-professional Collaboration in Primary Healthcare? Public Reporting: One Piece of the Quality Improvement Puzzle