Health Promotion International, Vol 13, 237-244, Copyright © 1998 by Oxford University Press
L King, P Hawe and M Wise
Despite repeated expressions of concern, both academic researchers and
programme delivery practitioners have neglected the dissemination of new
knowledge about health promotion programmes. This has meant that effective
programmes are often not implemented as widely as they could be and that
health promotion programmes are not achieving their full potential. This
paper analyses what has been written in the published literature about
dissemination and discusses the problems from the point of view of
practitioners who are involved in programme delivery. Factors influencing
dissemination have been well described; yet the dominant notion in the
literature is of dissemination as a one-way process, a downstream transfer
from a group who produce knowledge to a group who implement programmes. At
the same time, there is considerable theoretical and practical evidence
that linkage systems between researcher and implementer groups can foster
more effective transfer of programmes. From the perspective of those
involved in programme delivery, it appears that dissemination is most
likely to be influential if it is based on a two-way process of exchanging
knowledge between researcher and implementer groups. While linkage systems
offer the kind of structure or process to support two-way exchange, they
need to overcome significant barriers if they are to become a feature of
the health promotion system we work in. Linkage systems must span different
organisations, and these organisations do not necessarily have compatible
purposes. A two-way construction of dissemination also has implications for
how research on dissemination is tackled, and makes apparent how such
research could benefit from collaboration with programme delivery
practitioners. The irony of dissemination research - that the existing
publications and ideas do not have wide currency - itself indicates that a
new approach that genuinely tackles dissemination as a two-way exchange is
essential, if we are to achieve the full benefits of our knowledge in
health promotion.Keywords: dissemination; health
promotion; research and practice
ARTICLES
Making dissemination a two-way process
Health Promotion Unit, Central Sydney Area Health Service, Australia; Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, National Centre for Health Promotion, University of Sydney, Australia; Corresponding author address: School of Medical Education, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
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