2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum Report

Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum 2016

Report 1

Table of Contents Thank You to Our Sponsors Organizing Committee Venue Twitter Hashtag Background and Introduction DAY ONE Welcome to the Forum Presentation of Certificates to the Volunteer Organizing Committee Awards Presentation for Leadership, Innovation, and Community Building Welcome by the Chair Welcome back “KnowMo” Plenary Keynote: Michael Hillman, Ontario Ministry of Health & Long-Term Care Session 1: Presentation Session - Posters, Visual, Art Installations & Design Workshops Practice Leader Keynote: Melanie Barwick, The Hospital for Sick Children Session 2: 40 Minute Workshops Session 3: 40 Minute Workshops Casual Reception Photos DAY TWO Welcome to Day Two Awards for Posters, Visual & Art Installations Push Our Thinking Keynote: Benoît Dupont, Université de Montréal Session 4: 7 Minute Presentations Session 5: 7 Minute Presentations Session 6: 7 Minute Presentations Session 7: 7 Minute Presentations Closing Remarks & Invitation to Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum 2017

03 10 10 10 11 13 15 16 17 19 20 24 35 40 44 48

49 50 53 57 80 84 88 93

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Thank You to our Sponsors We are grateful to our sponsors and patrons who provided financial contributions and support to the fifth annual Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum. Without them this event would not have been possible.

Platinum Sponsors SickKids Learning Institute The Hospital for Sick Children 555 University Ave Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8 416-813-7654 ext. 228122 learning.institute@sickkids.ca

York University (In recognition of the 10th Anniversary of York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit) 4700 Keele St Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 416-736-2100 ext.88876 research.info.yorku.ca/researchservices/kmb/

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Gold Sponsors

CellCAN 5415 boul de l’Assomption Suite 235 Montréal, Québec H1T 2M4 514-252-3400 ext. 4137 info@cellcan.com

ResearchImpactRéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) Twelve University Members across Canada researchimpact.ca

Canadian Partnerships Against Cancer-Patenariat Canadien Contre Le Cancer 1 University Ave, Suite 300 Toronto, Ontario M5J 2P1 416-915-9222 Toll free: 1-877-360-1665 partnershipagainstcancer.ca

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Silver Sponsors AGE-WELL NCE Inc Toronto Rehab – UHN 12th Floor Research 550 University Ave Toronto, Ontario M5G 2A2 416-597-3422 ext. 7778 agewell-nce.ca

Cree Regional Authority 301 Queen St Mistissini, Quebec G0W 1C0 418-923-2661 gcc.ca/cra/cranav.php

Gambling Research Exchange Ontario 55 Wyndham St North, Suite 214A Guelph, Ontario N1H 7T8 519-763-8049 greo.ca

Learnography 439 University Ave, Suite 1450 Toronto, Ontario M5G 1Y8 416-642-0969 learnography.ca

Ontario SPOR Support Unit MaRS Centre, West Tower 661 University Ave, Suite 405 Toronto, Ontario M5G 1M1 416-673-8451 ossu.ca

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University of Guelph 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1 519-824-4120 uguelph.ca

Université de Montréal 2900 Boulevard Edouard-Montpetit Montréal, Québec H3T 1J4 514-343-7076 umontreal.ca

University of Ottawa Desmarais Building, 55 Laurier Ave East, 12th Floor, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5 1(613) 562-5802 continue.uottawa.ca

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Bronze Sponsors Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada Contact: Fiona Hill-Hinrichs Director, Communications 519-661-2111 ext. 81353 canet-nce.ca

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corportation (CMHC) 700 Montreal Rd Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0P7 cmhc-schl.gc.ca

CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) Provincial System Support Program 33 Russell St Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S1 416-595-6111 Toll Free: 1-800-463-6273 camh.ca/en/hospital/about_camh/provi ncial_systems_support_program/pages /default.aspx

EENet (Evidence Exchange Network) 33 Russell St Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S1 416-595-6111 Toll Free: 1-800-463-6273 eenet.ca

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NeuroDevNet 950 West 28th Ave Vancouver, British Columbia V5Z 4H4 604-875-2424 ext. 5436 neurodevnet.ca

PREVNet Queen’s University 98 Barrie St Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 prevnet.ca

Research Western Room 5150 Support Services Building 138 Western Rd London, Ontario N6G 1G9 519-661-2161 res-serv@uwo.ca

SSHRC/CRSH (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council/Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada) 350 Albert St P.O. Box 1610 Ottawa, Ontario K1P 6G4 613-995-4273 sshrc-crsh.gc.ca

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Supporters James Shelley Knowledge Translation Email: contact@jamesshelley.com

Sapiens Conseils 5960 6e Ave Montréal, Québec H1Y 2R4 514-516-9526 sapiensconseils.com Slightly Nervous Software – Patrick Moore

A special thank you to J. Gary Myers for writing the draft report and to Jessica Scott for editing and layout.

Also a big thank you to all the volunteers who stepped up to help with the little details needed to prepare the materials for participants. We could have not have done this without you.

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Organizing Committee Chair – Michael Johnny Manager, Knowledge Mobilization Unit, York University Amanda Cooper Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Queen’s University Jason Guriel Supervisor, EENet, CAMH (Centre for Addiction & Mental Health) Julia Lalande Senior Policy Analyst, Government of Ontario, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Treasury Board Kelly Warmington Program Manager, Knowledge Translation Education Resource Group, Sick Kids – The Learning Institute Krista Jensen Knowledge Mobilization Officer, Knowledge Mobilization Unit, York University Renee Leduc Performance Analyst, NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council)

Travis Sztainert Knowledge Broker, Content Specialist, GREO (Gambling Research Exchange Ontario) Trudy Smit Quosai CEO, GREO (Gambling Research Exchange Ontario) Ex-Officio – Peter Norman Levesque President, Institute for Knowledge Mobilization

Venue Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning 686 Bay St Toronto, Ontario M5G 0A4 416-813-7654

Twitter Hashtag #CKF16 10

Background and Introduction The Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum was founded in 2012 by Knowledge Mobilization Works and took place in Ottawa, Ontario. The core theme was “What Is Knowledge* (K-Star for short), And Why Are So Many People Doing It?” K* was the term used, as the profession was called by at least 90 terms. The included knowledge mobilization, knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer, knowledge translation and knowledge implementation. Regardless of the term used, it was recognized that knowledge professionals had a desire to use their work and their research to make more evidence based decisions regarding programs, policies, practices, and, ultimately a change in behavior to make the world a better place.

The 2013 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum in Mississauga, Ontario built on the conversations started the previous year and focused on four key themes: 1) 2) 3) 4)

Building on existing capacity and building new capacity The Next Generation – Students and Apprentices in knowledge mobilization Learning from each other: Comparisons across sectors Methods, Tools and Theories – The Art and Craft of knowledge mobilization

The 2014 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which was themed “Putting Research to Work: Social & Economic Innovations, showcased how previous forum themes had been developed and put into practice.

The 2015 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum was held in Montréal, Québec which made it a perfect location to represent Canada’s cultural diversity, open mindedness, and ability to collaborate and work together. The theme of the forum was “La créativité comme pratique: mobilser différents modes de pensée – Creativity as Practice: Mobilizing Diverse Ways of Thinking”. This forum was also the first fully bilingual Knowledge Mobilization Forum.

The fifth annual Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum (CKF) was held on June 28-29, 2016 in Toronto, Ontario. The interdisciplinary conference provided learning opportunities and professional development experiences for practitioners, researchers, students, administrators, thought leaders, and many others engaged in the art and science of Knowledge Mobilization (KMb). It hosted over 230 attendees from across Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Forum participants were welcomed by the President of the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization, Peter Norman Levesque and the 2016 Forum Chair, Michael Johnny. Johnny is the Manager of the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York University.

As interest in the forum continues to grow, this year’s forum had the largest attendance yet, at 232 attendees. Participants came from a variety of sectors including health, academia, non11

profit organizations, aboriginal affairs, climate change, water & the environment, poverty reduction, design, homecare, children & youth, healthy aging, homelessness and social services, mainstream and documentary media, occupational health & safety, addictions & mental health, education, disability services, business, agriculture, and government.

The success of the first and following forums has created an opportunity for input from a diverse group of professionals from varying fields. Unlike conferences or forums that usually gather professionals from one specific field or specialization, the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum’s diversity of participants creates a unique atmosphere of sharedexperiences and collaboration. First-time participants are often pleasantly surprised to find common experiences and similar challenges that can be approached with newly-learned methods despite the differences in their work and backgrounds. The successful 2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum (CKF16) in Toronto, Ontario sustained the history of coconstruction of meaning and shared understanding of the strength of our diversity by focusing on this year’s theme “Systems and Sustainability”. These events clearly show how each year the Knowledge Mobilization Forums continue to build and “scale up” to create an enduring field of diverse knowledge practitioners, working towards a common goal.

The success and reputation of the annual Knowledge Mobilization Forum created the platform for two associated events this year. The first, held on June 27, 2016, was hosted by NeuroDevNet. This event was the 2nd annual Networks of Centers of Excellence Knowledge Mobilization Symposium and was held as a satellite event to CKF16. The second event was held on the evening before CKF16 by York University, and hosted over 40 people to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Knowledge Mobilization Unit.

Each year the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum provides the opportunity for a diverse group of professionals to create better practices, better policy and supports, more efficient implementation procedures, and further innovation - all with an ultimate goal of greater value for society. The Forum is organized as an opportunity to share knowledge and to push the current boundaries of what we do as KMb professionals. This success of the event provides some of the best minds and most creative practitioners in the field the opportunity to collaborate and form ongoing relationships year after year.

This report details how these efforts came together through keynote speakers, presenters and participant activities in the sharing of knowledge and by inspiring an international awareness of the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization profession.

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Welcome to the Forum Peter Norman Levesque, President, Institute for Knowledge Mobilization

It is with great excitement that I welcome you to Toronto for the 5th Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum. On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization, our generous sponsors, and our brilliant and dedicated volunteers, it is truly a pleasure and privilege to meet and engage with you all.

When we created this five years ago thinking it would be great to bring people together to share what we know to make things better, many of you said “yeah, that’s a great idea!” After we did it once, people said we should keep doing it – and so we did, building on our success year after year.

This edition of the Forum marks several important milestones. The theme of Systems and Sustainability – Creating enduring Knowledge Mobilization is important because we need to challenge ourselves to consider our interests in knowledge mobilization in the context of the world around us. For some of us this is a relatively new concept. For others, it is part of a longer path of building the practice, methods, tools, and norms that ensure that the best of what we know – from research as well as practice – is ready for others to use. Used to build better organizations, processes, policies, programs, and the wide variety of ways in which we create value for society.

During this year’s event there are some significant anniversaries being celebrated. It is the 5th Anniversary of the Forum, and York University is celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the establishment of a dedicated knowledge mobilization unit embedded in the institution, serving both the academy and the wider community that surrounds it. We congratulate their efforts and wish them continued success.

Another anniversary is my own personal involvement in knowledge mobilization field. This year marks the 15th year since I originally took on the role of Deputy-Director of Knowledge Products and Mobilization at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. From SSHRC, it was my pleasure to serve at the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health. Over the years, I founded Knowledge Mobilization Works as a consulting practice, launched the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization, created a certificate program at the University of Ottawa, consulted for hundreds of organizations, and helped train thousands of professionals.

With all of this experience, here is what I know for certain. This is a collective effort. What we have seen is a community of knowledge practitioners and professionals who really care deeply about how we do this work together. We engage in this work to co-construct processes and systems that when sustained long enough lead us to witness the long-term impacts with the 13

well-being of our communities, our organizations, and our society – that’s why we’re working together.

I want to thank you for a couple of things; first for showing up and secondly for the ideas that you have contributed. You may notice that there is a particular language that we use at the Forum. We don’t call for your “submissions” – we seek your contributions! This co-constructed environment is an important piece of the Forum.

I also want to thank our valued sponsors. There is no way that this event could happen without their generous sponsorship by the following:                        

Sick Kids Learning Institute York University and the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York CellCan Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy Network Research Impact Canadian Partnerships Against Cancer AgeWell Cree Regional Authority Gambling Research Exchange Ontario Learnography Ontario Strategy for Patient Support Unit (SPOR) University of Guelph Université de Montréal University of Ottawa CANet CMHC CAMH EENet NeuroDevNet PREVNet Western Research Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada James Shelley Knowledge Translation Sapiens Conseils Patrick Moore of Slightly Nervous Software

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Presentation of Certificates to the Volunteer Organizing Committee: I also want to thank some very special people who helped make this happen. These are the people who gave up their time, including many of their evenings and weekends – on top of their regular jobs - to make this happen. First, I’d like to thank Michael Johnny. Michael Johnny has been Manager of the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York University for the past ten years.

I think of Michael as the “Gentleman Mobilizer”. He is a great person to work with and deeply dedicated to our work. Michael works “with” people not “on” them, and every time I have a chance to work with him, he is authentic, transparent, willing to learn and engage and build the process of knowledge mobilization. Working with Michael to build this edition of the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum has been both a pleasure and privilege. Michael’s dedication and hard work along with the organizing committee and volunteers is what has successfully made this year’s Forum come together. Thanks to Amanda Cooper from Queens University, Jason Guriel from EENet at CAMH, Julia Lalande from the Government of Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, Julia Schippke from Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Kelly Warmington from The Learning Institute at SickKids Hospital, Krista Jensen from York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit, Renee Leduc from NSERC (who unfortunately could not attend yet is taking a well-deserved vacation), and Travis Sztainert and Trudy Smit Quosai, both from the Gambling Research Exchange Ontario. A warm thank you to you all!

Organizing Committee with their Appreciation Awards

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Awards for Leadership, Innovation, and Community Building: Last year we started recognizing people who are making major contributions to the field of knowledge mobilization by presenting these people with the President’s Award. These are people who are part of making better decisions, helping us share and implement what we know in ways that allow for the meaning and value of what we do to be enhanced consistently over time. The first person I want to recognize is Melanie Barwick, Senior Scientist and Head of the Child and Youth Mental Health Research Unit, Child Health Evaluative Sciences Research Institute at The Hospital for Sick Children. Below is a photo of Melanie’s being presented with the 2016 President’s Award for Leadership, as acknowledgment for her valuable work.

The second person I would like to recognize is Julia Lalonde from the Government of Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Julia has helped build the largest community of practice of 150 people within the Ontario public service.

Below is a photo of Julia being presented with the 2016 President’s Award for Innovation, as acknowledgement of her valuable work.

The final person I want to recognize is Anne Bergen, Director of Knowledge to Action Consulting. Anne’s valuable work is an example of exemplary practice in the field of knowledge mobilization. Below is a photo of Anne receiving her 2016 President’s Award for Practice, as acknowledgement of her incredible drive and dedication.

The KMb forum is about challenging each other as part of a Community of Practice.

Let’s challenge each other to co-create a system that supports so many other systems - education and learning, health and wellness, governance and policy, safety and security, planning and implementation, 16

immigration and settlement, gender and identity, and childhood and aging. I am deeply impressed by the content you have contributed.

I will now hand over the 2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum to our Chair.

Welcome from the Chair Michael Johnny, Manager, Knowledge Mobilization Unit, York University

“Aanii! Boozhoo! Michael Johnny ndizhinikaaz.”

Hello! Welcome! My name is Michael Johnny.

I welcome you in Ojibwe to honour and acknowledge the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe people of the New Credit First Nation. I hope that this traditional, aboriginal meeting place of Toronto will support our objectives for connecting, sharing and learning.

I am privileged to welcome you to the 5th annual Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum, and to this world-class facility, the Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning of the Hospital for Sick Kids.

This year we sought your votes on your favourite posters to more meaningfully engage the poster presentation aspect of the forum. We asked you to write down the three top posters that resonated with you the most. We then selected the top three posters and had those people who created those posters come up and speak to their work about the posters.

We also want to build on the successes of previous years’ Forums in terms of the strong engagement using social media with the use of Twitter. The hashtag for this event is #CKF16.

This event is the absolute highlight of my professional calendar. It’s my highlight because I believe in this work. Our work in knowledge mobilization is very important. Within a complex system of human relationships, and an increasing need for evidence-informed decision making, our work is essential. I had the privilege of meeting with Dr. Vicky Ward earlier this week. Vicky is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds, Institute of Health Sciences. She works in Knowledge Mobilization and focuses on how healthcare staff and academics can be supported to learn from and share their knowledge with one another. So when I met with Vicky I was struck by something she said. “We work to help people make meaning of what we know.” In other words - as I believe - we do our work with intent and purpose to make the world a better place. Because of that, I feel energized and truly believe that this time and space to come together, to meet and interact, challenge ourselves and ask important questions, makes us better at what we do and fuels that purpose. At this forum, we meet, we interact, we challenge ourselves, and we ask important questions.

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Systems and Sustainability is the theme of this year’s Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum – but they are not hollow buzzwords. This theme is deliberate and woven within the process of the forum over the entire two days. I hope the next two days will be an opportunity for us to reflect on these terms, learn more about them, and explore a deeper understanding of these concepts. Each one of us is here because we purposely chose to spend two days together. We are part of a local, national, and international knowledge mobilization system. I work at York University. I work in a highly “silo’d” institution, but I come here and feel the silos are removed.

I am part of a vibrant community of practice – we all are here.

In terms of sustainability, ten years ago when I started working in knowledge mobilization in February 2006, I was pretty much terrified for the first two to three months of leaving my office for fear of someone asking me what I did. I could never imagine I would become part of such a vibrant group where there is strong research and practice of a growing profession whose work has become highly valued, respected, and provides leadership around the world. That’s what all of us here are a part of, and it’s something we need to celebrate.

Over the course of the Forum, our Forum committee has created space to make you feel safe, engaged, and highly connected. This year was the largest Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum to date of 232 participants. We all created an agenda – all of us – and I hope we can use this agenda to meet our own objectives. We are trying new things – optional activities; refection space; and the facilities at Sick Kids allowed for informal networking of which I’m glad to see all of you took advantage. I love how this field of knowledge mobilization is willing to try new things.

In closing, I want to thank the Hospital for Sick Kids for hosting this event with this amazing facility, an all of the sponsors. I want to thank the CKF16 Committee for their commitment and hard work to put this event together. I want to thank Peter Norman Levesque of the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization for an unwavering commitment to this work. I want to thank him for his guidance and leadership for helping to put all of this together for us. I also want to acknowledge my own institution, York University, and the leadership of the Office of the VicePresident, Research and Innovation which has given me the time and space to engage in this capacity.

To each of you, thank you for travelling to Toronto. “Meegwetch”, “Merci” and “Bonne journée”!

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Welcome Back “Knowmo” Photo Credit: Matthew MacLennan

From the very start of the first Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum, a little gnome named “Knowmo” has added to the fun of the event every year. Gnomes were introduced in the 16th century by Paracelsus, a philosopher, physician, botanist and astrologer who is famous for utilizing observations of nature, rather than referring to ancient texts – something of radical defiance during his time.

Apart from some of the more mischievous qualities, gnomes have been characterized as gifted knowledgeable inventors, intelligent, helpful, loyal, and technologically-minded, living together in harmony. During the 19th century, they came to be known as garden gnomes, and by the 1960s and 1970s were ubiquitous in household gardens. Garden gnome liberationists such as the Gnome Liberation Front were introduced in France in 1997. They claim that Garden Gnomes deserve the same freedom that any other living creature would have - and are noted to have stolen hundreds of gnomes – providing “gnome freedom” around the world.

Perhaps this is why Knowmo has chosen to take part each year at the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum, choosing to serve as our knowledge mobilization mascot. Each year at the end of a Forum, Knowmo decides to stay in the home of whoever is the Chair of the Forum that year – whether welcome or not!

See here for more about The Top Ten Things Knowmo Liked About #CKF16 and also on Twitter at #knowmo

Knowmo was introduced at this year’s Forum by last year’s Chair, David Phipps, Executive Director, Research & Innovation Services at York University.

As David pointed out, Knowmo stayed with him and his husband, fellow knowledge mobilizer, Gary Myers, and has also been to the U.K. for the UK Knowledge Mobilization Forum and had a lovely visit with the Director of the UK Forum, Cathy Howe.

Until next year’s Forum, Knowmo will be heading to his new home with this year’s Chair Michael Johnny and his family.

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Plenary Keynote: Michael Hillmer, Director, Planning, Research & Analysis Branch, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Michael Hillmer is Director of the Planning, Research and Analysis Branch in the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care.

Michael is a Director in the Health System Strategy and Policy Division and has been part of the Ontario Public Service since 2007.

Michael has been involved with many exciting projects during his tenure at the Ministry including developing the chronic disease prevention and management strategy, the Trilateral First Nations Health Senior Officials Committee, and creating guidelines for multiple sclerosis care. His excellent work has been recognized with several awards including the Ministry of Health’s ACE Award, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services’ Pinnacle Award, and across the OPS with two Amethyst Awards. Previous to the OPS, Michael was a Project Manager at the Health Council of Canada where he contributed to their agenda to monitor the progress of the Health Accords. He also contributed to improving the quality and safety of care at Sunnybrook Hospital’s General Internal Medicine Division as a consultant. His experience in the private sector arises from his work in the pharmaceutical industry. Michael’s academic background includes a PhD in clinical epidemiology and a Masters in Pharmacology from the University of Toronto, and a BSc from Carleton University. He remains involved at the University through teaching and mentoring.

Knowledge Mobilization: The Power of Systems “Knowledge Mobilization brings innovations into practice.”

So began the plenary keynote speaker address by David Hillmer. Hillmer spoke about the work of Dr. David Naylor, former Dean of Medicine at the University of Toronto and Chair of the Federal Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation. He acknowledged that a there is still much work to be done in research and development to turn the value of innovations into practice. Focusing on the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum’s theme of Systems and Sustainability as the central premise of his talk, Hillmer stated “it’s not enough to have a knowledge broker in an organization - although an important person to include – there has to be a systems mindset and approach within the organization around knowledge mobilization for sustainability.”

“A multitude of people are involved in the uptake of an innovative idea. Success requires an organizational approach to knowledge mobilization.”

Although most of Hillmer’s examples were taken from his experience in the health sector, he pointed out that they can be easily generalized and have broader application in a wide-range of fields.

Hillmer said we would not have seen the current focus on evidence-informed decision making in government ten years ago, as the decision making culture has changed thanks to the field of knowledge mobilization, and the shift in evidence-based medicine that began in earnest in the 1960s.

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Using the story of David Sackett, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics at McMaster University (referred to as the ‘father of evidence-based medicine’) who recently died in May 2015 at the age of 80, Hillmer touched on Sackett’s influence in the 1960s and 70s to take the best available evidence, combined with clinical experience and knowledge, along with the values of the people being treated to understand all three of these areas. Hillmer said this approach is exactly the same as today’s evidence-informed policy making or evidence-informed program design.

To Hillmer context is important to a systems approach, as each organization is required to make a judgment call around whether it will work in one’s setting by asking “are the right resources available” and “what is the governance or leadership model” to create sustainability. Hillmer stressed knowledge mobilization is the key to achieve a systems approach within the organization by using and knowing your own organization’s knowledge mobilization structures, processes, and tools.

“How do we immunize ourselves from cherry picking evidence that supports viewpoints rather than be representative of a knowledge base?”

Calling on anyone in a senior leadership role at the Forum, Hillmer challenged them to think about ways to systematically capture, codify and bring evidence-based practices to the forefront within their organization to avoid a cherry picky approach.

Hillmer presented the words from a 2014 lecture of American surgeon Dr. Atul Gawande to explain the importance of shifting to a systems mindset within organizations to work together as a system: “as we embark on the 21st century, we have found that the 20th century has given us a volume of knowledge and skill that is beyond what any individual can simply hold in their head, can know how to deliver on…The volume of knowledge and skill has exceeded our individual capabilities.”

Hillmer related a case by Dr. Gawande about a young girl in Austria who was submerged under ice-cold water for 30 minutes and brought to the hospital. Once there a massive amount of resources were applied, and hundreds of healthcare providers were brought together to save her life. A helicopter was used to transport her, the girl was put on heart/lung bypass, she was put on dialysis, and her body was warmed slowly with the assistance of neurosurgeons, nurses, occupational therapists and a variety of other hospital services working together. Miraculously, the little girl survived and years later regained full function. This is a great example that pushes the boundaries of our understanding as everyone involved felt they had nothing to lose and felt it was certain the little girl would die. Hillmer thinks this is a valuable example as the hospital learned from the experience by capturing and codifying the procedure that saved the little girl’s life in order to save other lives in the future and to help others regain function even faster. Hillmer said that the procedure used now a routine process initiated by the hospital call-centre to bring a variety of medical resources together right from the start. Along with this

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great example are thousands more of organizations coming together in a crisis to utilize a wide variety of resources and evidence-based practices with a systems approach.

Hillmer emphasized the need to adopt an organizational mindset and cultural celebration of evaluation and evidence within an organization. We need to value evidence, create tools and processes from evidence, and hire people who are effective at using knowledge mobilization to develop this organizational mindset as a cooperative system, stated Hillmer.

He also referred to the work of British Professor of Primary Healthcare, Tricia Greenhalgh, How to Spread Good Ideas: A systematic review of the literature on diffusion, dissemination and sustainability of innovations in health service delivery and organisation. He says mobilizing knowledge today takes a system.

“A multitude of people are involved in the uptake of an innovative idea. Success requires an organizational approach to knowledge mobilization.”

Hillmer thinks the implementation process of innovation includes factors about the individual, the organization, and the environment within and outside the organization.

Hillmer said that Greenhalgh found there are characteristics of the innovation that need to be considered its complications, its similarities to what was there previously, the number of steps required to implement it, and how it fits within the work flow of the individuals that all affect the knowledge mobilization process. He mentioned there are characteristics of the individual that need to be considered as well. These include where they fit on the distribution curve, their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs about behaviour, a sense of self-efficacy, their socio-economic situation, and their ability to endure the innovation. He referred to the characteristics of the organization that need to be considered. If the organization is not willing to focus or provide resources toward the innovation it won’t matter how beneficial the innovation may be, if there an organizational mindset, and what orientation process was used. Hillmer cited the characteristics of the environment – is it a scarce environment or rich environment, is there a value-set that matches the innovation being put forward.

Hillmer says all of these factors create a very complicated system which is why it can’t just be dispensed at the hands of one person – it requires hundreds of people to be in the same organizational mindset.

Once an organization designs a change process that considers and incorporates all of these characteristics routinely they are more likely to be an organization that uses innovation more effectively.

Hillmer spoke about several programs that have been initiated by the Ontario Government and Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care using a Systems and Sustainability approach. These include:

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The Program Review, Renewal and Transformation (PRRT) introduced with a new approach to government planning and budgeting. PRRT is increasing the government’s capacity for evidence-based decision-making. It provides the government a way of achieving better outcomes by ensuring the best available evidence and analysis informs the government’s decisions. This is done by tracking the performance of public services to make sure Ontarians get the best results and value for money.

The Applied Health Research Questions (AHRQs) essentially provides a “researcher on call” with the ability to pose a question to a researcher from any sector and work with a particular researcher to have that question answered. Such answers are provided to program designers and policy-advisors by developing a specific relationship with a researcher and a closer connection to the research process.

This research provides data, analyses and knowledge to help build a strong, evidence-based foundation for innovation and decision making to improve the Ontario health care system.

Health Quality Ontario has created the Adopting Research to Improve Care (ARCTIC) program which fasttracks the adoption of research evidence into broader clinical practice across the health care system.

ARCTIC ensures patients across Ontario receive the highest quality care by helping to quickly and effectively implement best evidence-based care to support rapid movement of innovation to practice.

All of these programs are designed to move evidence into practice using a systems approach.

Hillmer concluded his keynote address with the following quote: “It is only by adopting an organizational (systems) mindset as a cultural celebration of evidence and evaluation that we will realize the benefit of all of the information (knowledge) that sits in stock.”

“The benefits are too great and the costs are too high not to do this.”

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Session 1: Presentation Session - Posters, Visual Art Installations & Design Workshops Presenter(s)

Abstract

Stephanie Lagosky, Linor David, Ananya Tina Banerjee

Women’s Xchange: Supporting the Uptake of Women’s Health Research Findings

Cathy Howe

Desperately creative: Trying to capture people’s attention with really boring research or The trials and tribulations of creating and delivering Knowledge Mobilisation: The Musical

Women’s Xchange is a women’s health research knowledge translation and exchange centre based at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. The three main objectives at Women’s Xchange are to enhance research in the community, build the capacity of women’s health researchers, and support the uptake of women’s health research findings across Ontario. In this presentation we focus on one initiative, the $15K Challenge grant program and related knowledge mobilization activities. The $15K Challenge awards grants of $15,000 or more to community-driven research that addresses local women’s health issues. This granting mechanism works to build capacity in community-based researchers with the additional goal of potentially influencing policy, practice or further research. One of the novel reporting requirements for projects funded through the $15K Challenge is a 3-minute video about the research conducted. At this point Women’s Xchange functions as a knowledge broker sharing the videos via the Women’s Xchange website, YouTube, Twitter, policy talks hosted by the ministry and at film festival style screenings during our other events. In this presentation, we will screen a sampling of project videos, then describe strategies employed to ensure their broad dissemination.

Representatives of the research teams will describe their experiences with respect to challenges, barriers and success factors in conducting their studies and creating the project videos.

From 2013-14 I held a National Institute of Health Research Knowledge Mobilisation Fellowship during which I conducted a mixed-methods case study into how an English NHS Foundation Hospital identifies relevant new knowledge and puts it into practice.

That’s a fellowship and a research project without a snappy title in sight.

I found interesting things like: • Improvement is like a quest – people set off knowing it’s going to be hard and they’ll probably fail, but are committed to it and willing to do what they can

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• improvement projects work best when they and the people involved are aligned with other priorities in the organisation – and worst when they’re not; • that improvement is a really tough job and people will do ‘whatever is necessary’ to achieve it, and even then it often fails; • that when it works it’s worth it, but the cost is high both personally and financially; • that there is far, far, far too much data to be fully cognisant of it all, but almost never the information you or someone other hound actually wants; • there’s a gap between capability to improve and capacity to improve – or is there, this might just be an excuse And I drafted some papers, and did some presentations… but I wanted more.

Wesley Oakes, Caroline Godbout

This is my story of trying to turn ‘traditional research’ into an accessible visual musical performance and video products – the trials, the errors, the successes and the opportunities. It will include footage of a live performance, a video describing one of the research themes, narrative and perhaps an actual live performance – to be discussed.

Presenting research as visual narrative: Representing Black men, masculinity and HIV in “The Test” Health promotion strategies challenge people to think seriously about their health, encourages critical dialogue on health-related practices and behaviours, and supports people to adopt lifeenhancing practices. “The Test” (2015), is a short film that we developed as a KTE initiative from the iSpeak research study that was implemented in 2011-2013. iSpeak explored the HIV-related needs, challenges and priorities of heterosexual Black men in Ontario through (a) focus groups with HIV-positive and HIVnegative self-identified heterosexual Black men in Toronto and London, (b) a focus group with community-based service providers who work with Black communities in Ontario, and (c) one-on-one interviews with researchers who work on health-related issues among Black communities.

“The Test” follows a young heterosexual Black man who wants to get tested for HIV. It explores his anxiety about getting tested, and what it means for him and the people in his life. The film aims to promote HIV testing among heterosexual Black men and foster discussions about responses to HIV in Black communities in Ontario.

The film is also a tool to facilitate discussion about how Black men deal with their health and the health of others who are close to them.

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4p3Gx2NS4

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Jenna Robertson, Karen Suzuki, Sarah Burke Dimitrova

Not what we planned: Two stories of birth and postpartum hemorrhage Narrative story telling is increasingly used as a knowledge mobilization tool. For topics that involve decision-making or more complex themes like personal risk assessment or mental health, a story-telling approach may be a more effective way to communicate evidence-based research findings to health care consumers than traditional methods like pamphlets or interviews.

This animated film was created as part of a knowledge translation project funded by The Women’s Xchange at Women’s College Hospital. It serves as a multimedia knowledge translation tool for midwifery clients who have experienced postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). Print resources were also developed to accompany the film.

The beautiful, textured drawings in the animation along with a diverse group of characters, engage the audience and makes the technical information about a potential obstetric emergency accessible to viewers.

The script is based on coded analysis of focus groups and online surveys with Ontario midwifery clients who had suffered a PPH. Existing qualitative literature on the psychosocial experience of PPH reports that study participants tend to feel isolated and alone. The character-driven narrative may provide a feeling of peer-to-peer support that many report they wish for after a PPH. Evidence-based information from the voice of a real registered midwife is woven into the story, sharing information about midwives in Ontario, choice of birthplace, and the midwifery model of care.

This film also contributes positively to the images of birth available in our media landscape, where birth is often portrayed inaccurately and as a frightening experience where women in labour have little or no agency (e.g. feet in stirrups, etc.). Images for the births depicted in this film were based on real photographs of home births gathered as part of doctoral research on choice of birthplace conducted by a registered midwife in Ontario.

Here is a link to view the film: youtu.be/CqIVK7PgpXI

Marcelo Bravo, Moura Quayle

Re-inventing the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization using the Strategic Design Method The Strategic Design Method (SDM) is an engaging, interdisciplinary framework that integrates design and strategic analysis in a new

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level of systemic exploration, prototyping and action-oriented solutions.

It is particularly useful for tackling complex problems, especially when an identified problem is owned by many, or is situated within fast changing circumstances. The advantage of SDM as a framework to solve problems and propose alternative solutions lies in its capacity to analyze the type of problem and its underlying causes.

These activities and tasks are performed through a highly engaging iterative process that leads to a creative stage where co-created solutions are visualized and discussed according to the current and future needs of the group or organization.

The Strategic Design Method has been successfully applied in business (Sauder d.studio), academic contexts (PolicyStudio@UBC and UBC Design Challenge) and public institutions (CreativeBC). Its expanding practice is leading to a new type of strategic direction focused on organization’s needs.

This “training workshop” time is intended for participants to have a strategic design session that will benefit directly the development agenda of the Institute for Knowledge Mobilization.

Christine Ackerley

What goes unsaid? Critical discourse analysis of stakeholders’ communication in an integrated knowledge translation project With the move towards “integrated” knowledge translation (iKT), more health researchers are seeking to engage potential knowledge users along every step of the research process. We know that different stakeholders bring different perspectives to the table.

However, many of these perspectives – and the underlying assumptions they entail – are never explicitly discussed or questioned.

There is a large body of literature exploring how individual-level factors (such as someone’s ability to read highly specialized, jargonfilled research evidence), and organization-level factors (such as mismatched expectations between academic and community settings) can have various effects on the success of KT efforts.

Relatively less explored in the research literature are macro-level factors, such as social and cultural beliefs, or the political or economic environments.

This poster displays the preliminary work of a study seeking to unpack the discourses that emerge within and shape an iKT project based in Vancouver. Discourses are socially and historically situated sets of ideas, concepts and categories that represent commonly held but often unspoken assumptions about reality. Discourses are

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also produced and reproduced through social identities, social relations, and systems of beliefs. This research examines the power dynamics involved in the iKT stakeholders’ relationships, by conducting a critical discourse analysis of texts, including the project’s email archive, field notes from participatory workshops, and other organizational documents. The poster will highlight some of the dominant discourses that emerged, and discuss possible implications of these on daily iKT practice and long-term goals.

Michelle CanacMarquis, Michèle BoileauFalardeau, Andrea Simpson, Heather Orpana, Bernard Choi and HALE research team

Adapting epidemiological data to influence decision: An example based from practice In a day and age when information is abundant and readily accessible, epidemiologists acknowledge the need to adapt their findings into persuasive science communication. As a result, this poster presents a four step process of knowledge adaptation to support data scientists in their efforts to influence decision-making.

First, a group of epidemiologists identified the need for a more structured approach towards the visual presentation of data. To address this need, the group selected the following question: What are effective practices to adapt epidemiological data to influence decision?

Second, following a rapid review of both peer-reviewed and grey literature from various disciplines, such as journalism, graphic design, and human perception theory, a summary was produced to highlight a variety of principles and resources that can be used in the practice of data visualization.

Third, the identified principles and resources were used by attempting to modify a 1-page infographic. The demonstration of each modification featured in this poster provides further evidence of how these graphical principles can be applied by someone with little-to-no graphic design background, and within a reasonable time-frame.

Finally, a group of target audience was consulted to understand their interpretation of the graphical representation and how they would have modified it differently.

In conclusion, the process-driven information presented in this poster is useful for the effective communication of data. Given the increasing popularity of infographics, it is important to consider how an audience interprets graphs and whether they appropriately reflect its key messages and intended purpose.

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Vicky Ward

Accessing health and social care services: a story about knowledge sharing in a community health and social care team This poster is about the Ashgrove community health and social care team (fictional name!). The team is made up of different health and social care professionals and their job is to work together to look after people living in the local community. People working in teams like this need to be able to share knowledge with each other so that they can provide joined-up care and support for people. But they come from different backgrounds, organisations and professions so sometimes struggle to share what they know. This is because they have very different ways of looking at the world which are often hidden in the ways that they work. They often end up 'talking past' one another.

Through words and images the poster will tell the story of how the Ashgrove team share knowledge with each other and describe what their knowledge sharing looks like. Visit https://issuu.com/vlward2012/docs/accessing_services_storybook for a preview of the story. The story is based on data collected by observing the real-world work of a community health and social care team during a project on knowledge sharing across health and social care boundaries.

The poster will also present some questions which could be used by knowledge mobilisers to help the Ashgrove team (and those in similar situations) to share knowledge more smoothly.

Alexandra Harrison, Rossana Coriandoli

The Knowledge Connection: How EENet’s knowledge brokers can help communities of interest improve the mental health and substance use system in Ontario Evidence Exchange Network (EENet) is a knowledge exchange network that connects people with people and people with evidence, to make Ontario’s mental health and substance use system more evidence-informed. EENet takes a network-ofnetworks approach. As part of this approach, EENet offers knowledge exchange support to communities of interest (CoIs) across Ontario.

CoIs bring together diverse stakeholders who share a common interest to develop and spread new knowledge and improve understanding and action around an issue. EENet-supported CoIs take a provincial approach and focus on mental health and substance use, as they relate to systems and services. EENet’s objective is to support the knowledge exchange goals of each CoI, strengthen partnerships, and build capacity to ensure the CoI becomes sustainable.

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Each CoI is headed by a lead organization and members can include researchers, service providers, decision makers, system planners, persons with lived experience, and families across the mental health and substance use sector and other related sectors (such as justice, education, children and youth services). Currently supported CoIs were selected by the EENet steering committee, which represents various EENet stakeholders and organizations.

Each CoI receives support from an EENet knowledge broker, has access to EENet’s technological and communication resources, and is connected to EENet’s network of stakeholders and partner organizations.

This video will show how EENet provides knowledge exchange support to CoIs and the impact this support has on both the CoIs and the mental health and substance use system in Ontario.

Ashleigh Townley, Shauna Kingsnorth, Taryn Orava, Christine Provvidenza

A Sustainability Roadmap of Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) in the Trenches - The Chronic Pain Assessment Toolbox for Children with Disabilities As Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) practitioners, we start projects with KMb plans grounded in the literature. However, we can only anticipate so much; how we adapt our processes to fit the new needs and context as a project evolves can be instrumental to its success.

In 2013, The Chronic Pain Assessment Toolbox was created as a compendium of evidence-based resources to support the standardization of chronic pain assessment, creating opportunities for earlier intervention and management to reduce chronic pain for children with disabilities at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, Canada.

This poster will present a roadmap of the implementation, evaluation and sustainability of the Toolbox undertaken by Evidence to Care, the KMb hub at Holland Bloorview. Using narratives, clinician video, outcome data, and the National Health Service (NHS) Sustainability Model grading system, we will highlight our processes. We will reflect on activities completed that contributed to the success of this project; in hindsight the activities that should have been undertaken to improve the long-term sustainability; and the effect of system factors beyond our control.

This poster poses the question to attendees: what are some benefits and drawbacks to using sustainability measures? In using a numerical rating system for sustainability, how much can it tell us

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about what is happening on the ground and predict possible change in use over time? This poster will contemplate the divide between reading and planning for sustainability, in comparison to ongoing sustainability activities underway at Holland Bloorview to date.

Kate Wetherow

The Visual Toolbox: How visual management can enhance program development and learning To be a learning organization you need to bring your imagination to work.

From post-it note process maps to Knowledge Walls, these are just some of the tools that staff at the Canadian Co-operative Association (CCA) use to share their knowledge and develop institutional capacity in program development and learning.

CCA is an international development organization that establishes and grows co-operatives with the vision: to build a better world.

CCA works with local co-op partners in developing countries to provide training and technical expertise in co-operative development.

This poster will demonstrate that visual management enhances knowledge sharing in workplaces where complex services are provided.

The visual management tools and techniques to be highlighted include: • Process mapping • Graphic facilitation • Tracking boards • Staff information walls or bulletin boards • Visual storytelling • LEAN visual management methodology Photos and drawings will clearly describe visual management ‘in action’ at CCA and in the field with development partners.

These are tools and techniques that any organization can use in any sector, particularly those with limited budget, such as non-profits.

Matthew MacLennan

The role of knowledge optimization (KOp) in effective knowledge mobilization (KMb) and public engagement This work presents the strategic role that Knowledge optimization process can have in the work of researchers, knowledge brokers and

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communities for effective knowledge mobilization and engagement.

A lack of understanding between researchers and communities if often seen as a major roadblock to effective knowledge mobilization and engagement. Knowledge optimization (KOp) is presented as a dynamic, iterative and participative process that facilitates, orients and sustains interaction and engagement among the stakeholders involved in the system of knowledge mobilization. It is proposed that knowledge optimization leads to a more effective experience of knowledge mobilization and engagement, better serving the needs of all parties in the knowledge mobilization process. KMb processes can be strategically designed with Kop in mind.

Mélanie Ruest, Manon Guay, Guillaume Léonard

Algo: a portrait of its adoption in Quebec homecare systems

Shawna Reibling, Allison Lum

ROWL: Researchers of Wilfrid Laurier University: A photo speaks a 1,000 words

Introduction: Conceived within an integrative knowledge translation (KT) approach in the Quebec homecare systems (HCS), the Algo is a clinical algorithm aimed to support occupational therapists (OTs) and non-OTs in the allocation of bathing assistive technology for older adults in HCS. Three years after its dissemination using multiple KT strategies, the identification of level of adoption of the Algo is necessary to determine the relevance for adjusting the K* plan. Objective: Establish a portrait of the level of adoption of the Algo in the Quebec HCS in 2015. Methods: Knott and Wildavsky’s classification was used identifying the level of adoption of the Algo. Via an electronic survey, OTs working in HCS were ask to answer to seven questions adjusted to the Algo. Descriptive statistics were used to assess the level of adoption of the Algo. Results: 124 OTs (rate participation: 16%) have responded to the survey. The majority of them (52%) didn’t know about the Algo. Nearly 18% of the OT reported to be actively in process of adoption. Among OTs knowing and using the Algo, 15% reported that the Algo was the reference tool in their respective HSC and saw benefits for their clients.

Conclusion: The process of adoption of the Algo is undergoing in the Quebec HCS. Although the strategies used to disseminate the Algo show a positive effect with about half of the OTs mobilizing actually the Algo, the consideration of the other half of non-reached OTs in HCS suggests that KT strategies used may require adjustments.

Finding new ways to break down the ‘ivory tower’ to mobilize knowledge is a consistent goal of brokers and knowledge mobilizers.

Using the « Humans of New York » model to sharing stories about

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research/researchers, the poster will consist of a series of single images with accompanying short text. These photos will be supported by a website and shared through social media. The poster will consist of a screen with changing images and a postcard with a website link for participants to access with more information on projects.

Building on the sensibilities of the “ photovoice methodology�, this approach (photo, text, website) is designed to engage viewers with researchers as people, embedded in communities, pursuing work that they love. This approach to mobilizing research is intended to reach new audiences that may have not been in contact with university research in the past and to create new networks of interest around shared issues of concern.

Based on the progression of this project, this poster may also include short videos, to be posted on the website. The videos will not be part of the poster as they would be too hard to hear and distracting in the space.

Siobhan Cardoso, Sara Macdonald, Ron Saunders

Mapping relationships: building bridges and closing gaps Background and objective: Research organizations are increasingly recognizing that interpersonal relationships and networks play an important role in knowledge dissemination. This poster will present a visual map of IWH stakeholder relationships and how organizations can develop, identify and use a map of their current and potential stakeholder groups to improve their outreach and better target and inform their audiences.

Methods: A five-step model was created to help understand and guide the relationship mapping process, including needs and purposes for each relationship. The poster will suggest tips for organizations at each stage of the process, including key questions to ask as they develop their map.

Step 1: Establish your purpose Step 2: Identify key audiences Step 3: Visually conceptualize relationships Step 4: Identify strengths and gaps Step 5: Re-evaluate effectiveness and purpose Results: The intended result is a more purpose-driven development of relationships to help improve research relevance and disseminating messages. Sharing your relationship map across your organization is key to leveraging professional contacts, allowing for improved relationship-building capacity. Mapping organizational relationships may lead to more strategic engagement and increased

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collaborations, generating new ideas and targeting stakeholders for specific purposes and activities.

Zeinab El-Masri, Prithwish De

Making Ontario cancer surveillance knowledge useable: applying the Cancer Surveillance KT Action List Background & Objective It is well recognized that effective knowledge translation (KT) is integral to the uptake of cancer surveillance information.1 As such, in 2009 a group of key stakeholders developed a framework to guide KT activities specific to Canadian cancer surveillance; this framework included the Cancer Surveillance KT Action List.1 To enhance the utility of Ontario cancer surveillance information, the new cancer Surveillance Team at CCO adopted this approach to guide the planning and implementation of their KT activities.

Approach Applied the Action List as a framework towards planning and implementing KT activities: 1. New knowledge creation and development; 2. Improving capacity to support interaction; 3.

Determining the appropriate ways to communicate/ disseminate/apply the cancer surveillance information with the audience; 4. Evaluation Results Several KT activities and processes, mapping back to the Action List, have been identified or implemented, including: building KT and evaluation plans for all KT activities up front; the development of new tools and knowledge products; enhanced stakeholder engagement; and the use of new dissemination channels. These activities were facilitated through the use of existing tools and templates, leadership endorsement, and knowledge brokering.

Conclusions Overall, the Action List is a logical and useful approach towards planning and implementing cancer surveillance KT activities which meet knowledge user’s needs. The success of this approach was enabled by the use of existing tools; embedding a knowledge broker into the team; and leadership endorsement. Next steps will involve enhanced user engagement to inform KT planning moving forward.

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Practice Leader Keynote: Melanie Barwick, Director, Planning, Research & Analysis Branch, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Melanie Barwick, PhD, CPsych is a Senior Scientist and Head of the Child and Youth Mental Health Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry. She is affiliated with both the SickKids Learning Institute and SickKids Research Institute, acting as the Scientific Director of Knowledge Translation for the Child Health Evaluative Sciences program in the Research Institute. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Barwick also advises the SickKids Policy and Advocacy Steering Committee, chairs the University of Toronto Psychiatry Creative Professional Activity committee and is an executive member of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health.

Barwick is an internationally recognized expert in implementation science and knowledge translation, and has a program of research that spans health, mental health, education and global health sectors. Her research aims to improve the implementation of evidence into practice and to broaden the reach of evidence more generally to support decision making, policy, knowledge and awareness. She also brings practical field experience in implementation, as lead for a technical team supporting 70 to 120 service provider organizations for Ontario’s outcome measurement initiative for child and youth mental health, overseen by the Ontario Ministry of Child and Youth Services (2000-2015). Barwick provides training in knowledge translation internationally through the Scientist Knowledge Translation Training™ (for researchers) and the Knowledge Translation Professional Certificate™ (for KT practitioners); the former has been recognized as a Leading Practice by Accreditation Canada. She provides expert advice to government and service providers in the child and youth mental health, health and education sectors and extends her impact via a prolific and varied social media presence (www.melaniebarwick.com, melaniebarwick.wordpress.com,twitter.com/MelanieBarwick, and www.youtube.com/user/MelanieBarwick/videos).

Bushwhacking Knowledge Brokering: Building Organizational Capacity and a New Profession Melanie Barwick used the term “bushwhacking” (defined as clearing a path) to describe the process of highly-skilled Knowledge Translation Practitioners (KTPs) foraging ahead in building KT in their organizations, and establishing a more rigorous knowledge base in the paths of their unique roles in their organizations.

Using a Canadiana metaphor and visual slides of les voyageurs in canoe “shooting the rapids” and cutting through unchartered territory, Barwick presented some of the stories of modern-day bushwhackers involved as knowledge translation practitioners, knowledge brokers or knowledge intermediaries forging a knowledge translation (KT) trail. Barwick compared the historic bushwhackers

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with KTPs today - both involved in a licensed, organized effort while also being entrepreneurial and, in a sense, unstructured as they make their way in the wild. They had to work together and their success was dependent upon their skills, tenacity, collective effort and support of their organizations.

“Being a voyageur was not without its challenges – not unlike being a KT practitioner today” Continuing her comparison, Barwick says the life of a voyageur was often difficult with much to carry, similar to that of modern-day KTPs. Like the voyageurs, KTPs have to carve a path through unknown areas, clearing a path of evidence to practice. They both develop relationships; historic voyageurs with the First Nations people – KTPs among, between and with different people who are producers of knowledge.

Barwick said success in these roles requires a combination of hard and soft skills. Looking at the rise of the role of knowledge brokering since 1997, Barwick pointed out the continual and sturdy increase up to 2015. Referring to Andrew Hargadon’s, Firms as knowledge brokers: lessons in pursuing continuous innovation, Barwick presented how a growing number of organizations in the private-sector reported knowledge brokering as their core activity. She cited Hargadon’s four key tactics around enabling innovation through knowledge brokering: explore new territories, learn something about everything, find hidden connections, and make it work.

“Step out of your sandbox…learn as much as you can…build pathways…make the damn thing work!”

Drawing on these four areas, Barwick said knowledge brokers need to “step out of their sandbox” to collaborate widely. Learn as much as you can – as fast as you can – about new projects. A deeper and more flexible approach to learning will help one draw upon this knowledge to evaluate KT impacts. She urged the audience to build pathways that link project teams to relevant knowledge within the organization and beyond, by investing in communication tools that provide for intensive interaction and analogic thinking. The broader the communication around current problems, the more these problems can be examined from a variety of perspectives with a range of possible solutions. Echoing Hargadon’s final key tactic, “you have to make the damn thing work!” she stated. It is essential to use existing evidence, build on it, and share your stories to build models, strategies and work with others that fit innovative solutions into the established practices of the contexts and settings in which one is working.

Barwick pointed out that by 2007 the majority of the literature focused on characteristics of knowledge brokers. Barwick referenced Jonathan Lomas (whom she called “the grandfather of KT”) and his seminal work The In-between World of Knowledge Brokering, to illustrate the soft skills and personal attributes that enhance job performance as a knowledge broker. Among them Barwick mentioned entrepreneurial skills, trustworthiness and credibility, a clear communicator, an understanding the cultures of both the

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environments and settings in which one is working, the ability to find and assess relevant research and KT products in a variety of formats, the ability to facilitate, mediate, negotiate, and to understand and apply the principals of adult learning.

“Become a knowledge weaver.”

Barwick added to Lomas’ list of effective knowledge broker skills with the idea of becoming a “knowledge weaver”, by pulling together data with knowledge-user and system perspectives to shape a vision and articulate a path that can be followed, acted upon and evaluated.

“Become a synthesizer of evidence but also a synthesizer of good ideas and concepts.”

She further spoke about becoming a” synthesizer of evidence”, as well as a “synthesizer of good ideas and concepts”, while developing an ability to “see the big picture”. To be an effective knowledge broker is also to be a partnership-builder like being “a good host” with ability to scan the room discerning who needs what, who needs to meet whom, and who can help you. It is essential to develop a clarity of vision that can see the forest and the trees to broker the science/practice chasm.

Included in the hard skills or technical requirements needed to perform as an effective knowledge broker/KT Practitioner, Barwick mentioned the ability to synthesize tasks according to activity domains, identify, engage, connect and facilitate collaboration, identify and obtain evidence, facilitate and develop analytic interpretive skills, create tailored knowledge products, effective project coordination to support communication and information sharing with network development, maintenance and evaluation of change for sustainability. Barwick stressed these are all big, complex jobs for knowledge brokers/KT Practitioners to perform – which is why she encourages knowledge brokers/KTPs to seek professional development as well. Barwick has developed the SKTT – Scientist Knowledge Translation Training and KTPC Knowledge Translation Professional Certificate. For more information, see melaniebarwick.com/training.

“Research on the effectiveness of knowledge brokering is challenging.”

“More research with better designs is sorely needed.”

When considering the effectiveness of knowledge brokers (KB) working in health-related settings, Barwick spoke about the work of Bornbaum and colleagues. Bornbaum and colleagues synthesized a subset of 8 studies from among 22 and concluded that of these, only were methodologically sound.

Barwick also pointed to two other systematic reviews from 2009 and 2010, on the effectiveness of knowledge brokers and the influence of the role of knowledge brokers on stakeholder knowledge and practice. The studies A description of a knowledge broker role implemented as part of a randomized controlled trial evaluating three knowledge translation strategies headed by Maureen Dobbins; and Promoting the Use of Measurement Tools in Practice: A Mixed-Methods Study of the Activities and Experiences of Physical Therapist Knowledge Brokers directed by principal investigator Lisa Rivard.

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Rivard et al., reported a positive effect of the KB strategy on stakeholders’ knowledge and practices, while Dobbins’ study did not identify a statistically significant effect on stakeholder’s practices.

Other researchers, including Vicky Ward in the UK, Canadians Renee Lyons and Jennifer Yost, and Gade Waqa from Fiji report interesting and encouraging benefits of knowledge brokering, but don’t conclude knowledge brokers are responsible for the changes in participants’ knowledge. However, Bornbaum concludes we cannot establish knowledge brokers as responsible for the changes observed in participants’ knowledge. This is also true for Yost and Waqa’s studies relative to changes in participant skills. Impacts on policy and practice change are also reported in several studies, but again, methodological challenges hinder any conclusion that changes are attributable to brokering specifically.

As such, Barwick states “research on the effectiveness of knowledge brokering is challenging” and encouraged that “more research with better designs is sorely needed.”

Barwick included two more recent studies: a 2013 study by Janet Long, Bridges, brokers and boundary spanners in collaborative networks: a systematic review; and a 2015 study by Isioma N. Elueze, Evaluating the effectiveness of knowledge brokering in health research; a systematized review with some bibliometric information, which conclude that knowledge brokering has been effective as a KT strategy in communicating research-based knowledge to knowledge users, and play a complex network of complimentary roles, and not just a single role. Barwick reiterated that the researchers caution the need to distinguish between the ‘success’ of the knowledge brokering effort and its ‘impact’ – which, as Barwick reminded the audience, are two very different things. For instance, evidence can be successfully transferred to the knowledge user but may not be taken up or used in decision making.

Barwick reminded the audience that conveying relevant information to appropriate knowledge users does not automatically result in their taking action.

“We have much to learn from knowledge translation practitioners themselves, as they strive to develop KT programs and build organizational capacity for KT.” Despite empirical challenges, Barwick believes we have much to learn from KTPs and the work they do.

Referring to the alumni who participated in the training program she developed, who speak to the question of building KT friendly organizations (which Barwick is making available later this year as a KTPC Casebook), Barwick says “we have learned many tricks of the trade.”

Drawing further from the experiences of three knowledge translation professionals, Barwick spoke about Julia Lalande, Konrad Glogowski, and Heather Bullock. She says Lalande warns about being mindful of the lack of clarity in the knowledge brokering role. This lack of clarity can include issues such as the cropping up of expectations that are beyond the capacity of the role, the lack of organizational leadership or other staff support, and avoiding time-consuming activities that do not advance the role.

Lalande urges KTPs to clarify their role with their manager and create an effective strategic plan.

“Capture your impact! That’s a biggie!”

Barwick shared Glogowski’s insights for building a KT friendly organization: find the voices in your system, listen to learn, identify opportunities to add value, define your work and build a strong business case for it, build, but not alone. Ensure what you’re building adds value, don’t always think ‘big’ as smaller projects can add value too, find powerful friends who can open doors among researchers, experts, non-profit leaders, KTPs, and like-minded organizations. Finally, capture your impact – which Barwick stresses is “a biggie!”

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Barwick also shared an important list of “Do’s” from Bullock’s study. These include to remind people of your mandate to avoid “scope creep”, help outside your mandate where possible, be a resource for others, use resources from other KT shops, use the KT community to help educate your colleagues (as sometimes an external voice has more weight), remember people want to have better knowledge – KT can unite by bringing people together, internally and externally, make friends in your organization, engage those who may sometimes feel their toes are being stepped on, and find opportunities to evaluate and publish your work.

Barwick added some further “Do’s” building on those identified by Lomas almost a decade ago, including:    

Build incentives for KT and the KTP role in all settings to include funders, various organizations, and for KTPs themselves More formal recognition is needed for the interpersonal role of knowledge brokering (such as what’s being done at the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forums) More research and better research designs are needed to make a stronger case empirically to support the role of knowledge brokering Continue to meet the high demand for professional development in KT practice (such as what’s being done through the Scientists KT Training and KTP Certificate programs in Toronto, and soon to be launched in partnership with KT Australia)

Barwick concluded with the following quote from Andrew Hargadon:

“Knowledge brokers, whether working in 19th century laboratories or 21st century factories, share a common culture tailored to the need for continuous innovation. This culture reflects the willingness of members to seek out others’ disparate knowledge and to share their own; it can best be summarized as an “attitude of wisdom.” People who have an attitude of wisdom are cooperative because they are neither too arrogant nor too insecure to ask others for help.

By actively seeking knowledge, people demonstrate they are humble enough to recognize the value of the knowledge held by others yet are confident enough to seek it out, especially when this requires a tacit admission of their own ignorance. When engineers call for a brainstorm, they are admitting they have a problem and believe others can help them solve it. They are also gaining the respect of their peers for the difficulty of their project and for their ability to draw from others the relevant knowledge to create innovative solutions. The formal and informal rewards of the organizations also support this attitude of wisdom. Within knowledge brokers, career advancement depends not only on how well you perform, but also on how well you help others perform.”

“There is much left to do but we have come a long way and the future looks ever so good”, stated Barwick. Wishing everyone at the 2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum continued success, she ended the keynote by advising everyone to “stay true, continue learning, remain connected, and forge a path - you modern day voyageurs!”

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Session 2: 40 Minute Workshops Presenter(s)

Abstract

Christian Dagenais, Esther McSweenCadieux, Valéry Ridde

Deliberative dialogues as a tool for knowledge mobilization: Reflections from our experience in West Africa

Lisa Lachance, Rebecca Singbeil

Wisdom 2 Action events as a real‐time route for knowledge mobilization and network building

Deliberative dialogues, or deliberative workshops, represent a tool to create the necessary interaction to promote knowledge mobilization and utilization of research. These workshops bring together researchers and other stakeholders on a priority (Lavis, Boyko, Oxman, Lewin & Fretheim, 2009; Uneke et al, 2015. Moat, Lavis, Clancy, El-Jardali, & Pantoja, 2014 ).

According Lavis et al. (2014), "… Deliberative dialogues are a type of group process that can help to integrate and interpret scientific and contextual evidence for the purpose of informing policy development."

Our recent experience in West Africa, and evaluation activities which accompanied them, will be used to better understand the value and the possible effects of this type of workshop. We observed several positive impacts in these workshops: acquiring new knowledge, new collaborations creation, opportunity to learn from each other, etc.

Several barriers to effectiveness of the workshop were also observed: limited presence of political actors, lack of commitment from participants to develop an action plan and difficulty to set up a monitoring committee of the recommendations from the workshops. Based on our experience and on the results of evaluations, improvement suggestions for the holding of deliberative workshops will be offered.

We would like to bring the CYCC Network’s innovative Wisdom2Action workshop model to the Canadian KMb Forum conference to share as a community knowledge mobilization tool that can be used in many settings in the mental health sector. The goal of Wisdom2Action events is to facilitate cross-sectoral connection and knowledge sharing between a diverse group of participants, including researchers and academics, community based organizations, policy makers, and service users themselves. The events provide a unique opportunity for these participants to share knowledge (practice-based evidence, evidence-based practice knowledge, and local knowledge) and promote promising practices with each other and with their wider networks. Wisdom2Action events aim to inspire and empower a culture of knowledge mobilization and interdisciplinary collaboration in and between communities, and to connect these communities across Canada for additional support, knowledge exchange, and engagement.

Wisdom2Action events are highly participatory, using a unique suite of tools and frameworks to foster small group discussion, knowledge exchange, connection, innovation, and action planning. The CYCC

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Network has hosted 10 Wisdom2Action events across Canada that have engaged hundreds of participants. Event evaluations reported that 93% of participants found the events important for their work. In a February 2015 impact evaluation, 56% of evaluation respondents indicated they had made important partnerships through the Network that influenced how they provided services. In key informant interviews, respondents shared important stories about how participating in a Wisdom2Action event led to significant policy or program change. The results of W2A events have been documented in reports and videos that can be found on our website http://www.cyccnetwork.org/wisdom2action-­­events/.

Arlene Etchen, Lois McGrath

Changing the mindset – Encouraging Canadians to Plan for Aging in Place Seniors now make up the fastest-growing age group in Canada and the majority of them want to age-in-place. The challenge is that most people don’t proactively plan how to age in place and end up having leave their homes when their health declines.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) Knowledge Transfer team has been working to educate Canadians about how to plan for their senior years. Changing the mindset goes beyond educating seniors, it involves a process of engaging multiple stakeholders, building partnerships and creating customized outreach opportunities using CMHC research, resources and data.

Julia E. Moore, Sobia Khan, Sharon Straus

This session will provide attendees with an overview of the strategy, stakeholder relationships and approaches that have been developed to work towards a better understanding of aging in place. Presenters will engage attendees in a discussion about KMb strategy and explore how effective KMb can inform both policy and practice.

Planning for Sustainability Sustainability is a much-discussed but elusive concept, particularly for frontline implementers who are tasked with developing sustainable interventions in the absence of guidance on how to do so. The Planning for Sustainability workshop will focus on important factors related to the sustainability of interventions and programs. This workshop will be offered by the Knowledge Translation program at St. Michael’s hospital, which supports the training and support for core competencies to effectively integrate theories and evidence-informed practices into developing and sustaining interventions.

The objective of the workshop is to explain how to select and assess sustainability strategies and to enhance participant understanding of sustaining programs. The workshop will use didactic instruction and interactive activities to build participants’ understanding of how to actively plan for sustainability when designing a program.

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The first part of the workshop will present research on program sustainability and discuss how to apply this research to program development. Following this presentation will be an interactive activity where participants use a tool to plan for sustainability. The sustainability tool helps participants assess potential barriers to program sustainability and select appropriate sustainability strategies. This activity is an introductory exercise to guide participants through the process of identifying various factors that affect the potential sustainability of a program. The workshop will conclude with a group discussion. Workshop facilitators will guide the discussion using strategic questions to facilitate critical thinking about using systematic strategies to sustain interventions and outcomes.

Jana Kocourek, Kelli Dilworth

Developing and sustaining the knowledge broker role within Ontario’s transitioning child and youth mental health sector Within the past year, the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health (the Centre) has implemented the knowledge broker position to work collaboratively with 33 lead child and youth mental health organizations in Ontario who are still in the process of transition within their sector. A knowledge broker is one « whose job it is to move knowledge around and create connections… » (Meyer 2010).

This presentation will build on last year’s session that described the knowledge broker role within four organizations in mental health and addictions by taking a deeper look at this process in one organization (our Centre). Two of our knowledge brokers will present their perspectives of their role after the first year of implementation, specifically focusing on: 1. What was envisioned, but what actually happened 2. What worked well 3. What some of the challenges were and how (or if) have they been mitigated 4. Lessons learned overall 5. Recommendations for continuous development and sustainability of the knowledge broker position This interactive presentation will include stories from the field via videos and animation software, and will engage conference participants through discussion and reflections of shared lessons learned.

Cyndie Koning, Carol Scovil, Anna KrasDupuis, Jacquie Brown

Development of systems and tools to build knowledge mobilization capacity and sustainability in rehabilitation through a national community of practice.

This panel workshop will highlight the processes and systems needed for capacity building and sustainability in knowledge mobilization (KM). We will share experiences of the Spinal Cord Injury Knowledge Mobilization

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Network (SCI KMN) in translating clinical guidelines into sustainable practices in several rehabilitation hospitals across Canada. We will discuss how the implementation tools of the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) were adapted to support the ongoing process of integrating knowledge into practice in health care settings. These tools have been made available and used to support KM at other SCI rehabilitation centres, and with other patient populations. The following practical capacity building strategies will be discussed : 1. Creating a culture of KM within different health care institutions across Canada 2. Using simplified NIRN tools to translate knowledge and research into practice 3. Using KM frameworks to support sustainability 4. Engaging the whole team – leadership, clinicians, stakeholders and end users - to increase KM capacity and sustainability 5. Growing the KM community of practice – experiences supporting implementation and KM at new sites and in new clinical areas within our own hospitals The panel format will provide opportunities for participants to engage in discussions about how the SCI KMN’s experience in scaling systems and tools may be applied within their own context.

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Session 3: 40 Minute Workshops Presenter(s)

Abstract

Anne Bergen, Elizabeth Shantz

How and will provide an overview of research impact evaluation, from planning, to implementing, to understanding and using the results.

Using the impact and outcome evaluation of the Canadian Water Network as a case study, Dr. Anne Bergen (Knowledge to Action Consulting) and Elizabeth Shantz (Canadian Water Network) will discuss how to: • Define and understand evaluation goals • Create a logic model or theory of change as a framework for the evaluation; • Identify indicators and causal/ conditional assumptions • Evaluate at level of projects, programs, and organizations We will also review promising practices and tensions in research impact evaluation, including: ◦ contribution analysis ◦ partner-level inquiry ◦ success stories vs. quantified impact ◦ timing of impact ◦ opportunities and pressures from end-users and other stakeholders (e.g., funders, public) ◦ implications for sustainability Group discussion and questions will be woven throughout our presentation, and we will provide take-away handouts as a resource for participants.

Sara Macdonald, Siobhan Cardoso, Cindy Moser

Building and maintaining networks for knowledge mobilization Networks play an important role for research organizations. A systematic review by Oliver et al. (2014) on the use of evidence by policymakers found that collaboration and relationships facilitate uptake of research findings. Forming networks help research organizations build on relationships with key stakeholders and expand their reach with limited resources.

The aim of networks at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) is to promote evidence-informed policy and practice. IWH network members often facilitate research uptake by engaging in our research and research processes; they act as project advisors, study participants and/or recruiters. These interactions and activities help us ensure that our research is relevant and timely, and that our key messages reach the right parties. The Institute currently maintains 11 networks for 4 stakeholder groups: • Clinical practitioners

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• Injury and disability prevention professionals • Workplace parties • Government agencies and policy-makers In this workshop, participants will learn about developing and maintaining networks drawing from our knowledge and experience.

Participants will learn about: • The case for creating networks • Types of networks • Different methods for forming networks • Expectations of network members • Engaging members and capitalizing on their expertise • What organizations can offer network members in return • Resources for building and maintaining networks • Network evaluation and renewal Session leaders will provide opportunities for participants to reflect on their organizations’ potential to form new networks and share challenges and successes.

Amy Coupal

Mobilizing French as a Second Language: A model for disseminating new language teaching resources.

For almost a decade, Learnography has supported the Ontario Ministry of Education’s French as a Second Language team in their mission to provide quality learning resources to FSL educators. This includes a multi-faceted, multi-media strategy to engage educators across the province in an effort to share resources, disseminate research findings and promote dialogue as we support educators in improving their practice. Each year tactics, usage and impact are reviewed along with new possible approaches to support engagement and further practice improvement. All resources are available on the Transforming FSL website, which is regularly refreshed with new content on emerging themes, research and tools.

In addition to the website, Learnography is responsible for a communications plan to ensure the new resources are widely disseminated and dialogue continues through teacher-led channels. Our knowledge mobilization strategy included the development of a viral video for YouTube, blog posts, partnerships with teaching organizations, and social media outreach through consolidated efforts across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Promoted content was leveraged as appropriate to the medium and the audience. This diverse multi-pronged approach has proven very successful, as evidenced in the data collected by the project team. In this session, Amy Coupal will share the key components and lessons learned from the Transforming FSL project, encouraging attendees to identify, share and apply successful practices in their work.

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Barbara Szijarto, Kate Svensson, Peter Milley, Elizabeth Kristjansson, Alejandra Dubois

Supporting integrated KT with embedded evaluation

Christine Ackerley

A taste of our own medicine: tips and tricks to harness the literature for evidence-informed K* practice

Based on a current iKT project, we offer examples and invite discussion on innovation in KMb evaluation.

The Project: Interventions to improve community food security in developed countries: what works and why? This CIHR-funded integrated KT (iKT) project involves more than twenty individuals from academia, public policy, public health and food security coalitions, based in Canada, Scotland and Australia. The project is systematically reviewing and mobilizing evidence in partnership with decision-makers in multiple sectors and levels of the food security system. The aim is to support decision-making to improve food security, by collaboratively developing and sharing a body of evidence.

The Process: We are using evaluation to support development of a high quality iKT process. We are drawing on a developmental evaluation approach, which applies complexity and systems concepts for innovative program design. Having been involved in the project from an early stage, our explicit purpose is to apply systematic inquiry and reflective practice methods to support iKT as the project unfolds. For example:  using technology to visually map decision pathways in the food security ‘system’, and as a graphic facilitation tool in discussions about project structure and recruitment strategy  interviewing team members in the three countries for perspectives on the unfolding process; using infographics to synthesize feedback and promote reflective discussion about knowledge user engagement (what’s working, what needs attention) and KT strategic planning applying evaluation methods opportunistically as needs emerge: for example, outcome mapping concepts and collaborative development of indicators of ‘high quality’ knowledge user participation

K* practitioners enthusiastically urge decision makers to use the best available evidence, in order to make better decisions and ultimately have a positive impact on society. This interactive workshop turns the tables and looks at ways K* practitioners – across fields and disciplines – can use existing research to make decisions about how to conduct our K* work. This workshop will provide actionable tips to leverage the diverse and sometimes contradictory research about K*. We will discuss the role of theory in K* practice and debate how (and if) the research is relevant to our day-to-day practice. The workshop will also open up discussion about how workshop participants currently locate, understand and use the research literature on K*.

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During the workshop, participants will develop a personalized plan to stay on top of the K* literature most relevant to them, and learn some simple tricks to keep their momentum moving forward. As K* advocates, we know the challenges and benefits of using research knowledge in the real world, and this workshop provides participants with the inspiration, time and tools to follow our own advice.

Anneliese Poetz, David Phipps

The Hybrid KT Planning/Project Management tool NeuroDevNet is a Federally-funded Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE), dedicated to discovery through research and the translation of these activities and outputs into real impact(s) for Canadians.

NeuroDevNet is in its second 5-year cycle, and in order to demonstrate impact(s) of its work, NeuroDevNet’s KT Core acted upon direction from its Research Management Committee to focus efforts towards creating detailed KT Plans for 4 designated “High Impact Projects (HIPs)”. Part of the process required the creation of a customized KT Planning tool, called the “Hybrid KT Planning/Project Management tool”. The initial (prototype) version of this tool was piloted with the 4 HIPs. Feedback was sought immediately after its application, and field notes were taken to record this user input as well as our own observations about its use in practice. This information was later transformed into properly-worded requirements that we could apply to the design and development of the next iteration. The presentation as part of this workshop will explain the process for creating the tool and progress to-date, including a list of revisions in the form of requirements that are needed to inform the design of the next iteration. The tool, while designed for use by NeuroDevNet’s remaining 15 research projects that were not chosen for the HIP pilot, can also be useful for researchers in other NCEs, or anywhere. This workshop will create space for participants to work through parts of the tool and provide feedback to the presenters to inform future developments in order to maximize its usefulness for all researchers and KT professionals.

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Casual Reception

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Day Two Forum Chair Michael Johnny welcomed participants to Day Two of the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum. According to Johnny, one of the key indicators of a successful event is whether or not it’s moving at an appropriate pace. He mentioned that some conferences he has attended in the past felt as if they were moving way too fast and in turn, “creating a head that’s way too full.” Johnny thanked everyone for the incredible energy and what seemed like an appropriate pace for a jam-packed day on Day One. He also thanked Sick Kids for the amazing space at the Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning that allowed for an environment of sharing and comfort, an important part of the Forum. With the abundance of active tweets on Twitter from Forum participants, he felt like he really could be in six places at once he said.

Day Two at this year’s Forum would introduce some new things to the Forum including: the results of participant voting on the top three posters and brief presentations from the winners on their work and new 7minute presentation series to provide participants the valuable opportunity to attend various talks on a vast scope of knowledge mobilization topics in a shorter amount of time, said Johnny.

As a reminder, Johnny urged participants to try to breathe, slow down the pace, and enjoy the experience, all while using the opportunity to get everything you can from the event.

Johnny shared the good news that #CKF16 trended in the number two spot in Canada on Twitter on Day One – but said Day Two might have some stiff competition with the last day of school starting to trend!

Acknowledging again the Forum volunteers who worked tirelessly to create a successful event so far, Johnny thanked them for their ability to assist participants in seamlessly moving around the Forum facility and answer any attendee questions, and thanked the Forum Committee members who organized this year’s event. He also thanked the staff at SickKids for providing the space for the Forum to take place, and further welcomed participants to enjoy Day Two of the 2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum, and thanked them all for attending.

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Awards for Posters, Visual & Art Installations from Participant Votes Jason Guriel (EENet Supervisor and Communications & Social Media Coordinator), and Julia Schippke (Knowledge Broker at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital) had the privilege of presenting three winners with the 2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Awards for Posters, Visual and Art Installations. Winners were selected by participant votes.

Each winner, who did not know they would be receiving an award, was asked to provide a brief presentation of their work upon winning. This this spontaneous presentation was a task at which all of the poster winners excelled.

1st Place Winner Kate Wetherow (Knowledge Management Specialist at the Canadian Co-operative Association in Ottawa) Visual Management Toolbox Kate Wetherow presented her poster which described her practice in Knowledge Management. Wetherow stated the poster is not about a specific project, but rather her daily work as a Knowledge Management Specialist at the Canadian Cooperative Association. Wetherow described her team of about 40 staff as part of a world-wide international development organization with field offices around the world in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Eastern Europe. Wetherow talked about the challenges her team faced to connect and mobilize knowledge amidst organizational change, the changing competitive nature within the international development environment, and decreased funding. Tools and techniques were required to build internal capacity to compete and deliver strong programming. Wetherow said her team strives to make their work as visually understood as possible around areas of learning and program development by putting up a physical, visual Knowledge Wall in the workplace. This Visual Management Toolbox allows her team to tell stories and track achievements for process improvement in order to continuously improve. In addition, this system allows everyone on her team to cost effectively connect through visual action using markers, sticky notes and whiteboards, rather than through the use of technology, and by making the most of what they have with the least amount of resources.

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2nd Place Winner: Vicky Ward (Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds, Institute of Health Sciences)/with illustrations by James McKay Accessing health and social care services – a story about knowledge sharing in a community health & social care team Vicky Ward presented the poster about how people working in health can share knowledge together. She emphasized the project is not about how people share academic/research knowledge, but rather on practice-based knowledge in stories. The project uses a story-telling format developed to share knowledge in a community health and social care team. Ward read one story aloud to the Forum audience, which can be found using the title link above. The story-telling format, which includes a total of 4 online stories attempts to capture experiential knowledge in an easy to understand knowledge sharing style.

3rd Place Winner: Ashley Townley (Knowledge Broker, Evidence to Care, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital)/T. Orava, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, University of Toronto; C. Provvidenza Evidence to Care, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

A Sustainability Roadmap of Knowledge Mobilization in the Trenches: The Chronic Pain Assessment Toolbox for Children with Disabilities Ashley Townley presented her teams’ poster which is modeled on the Snakes & Ladders game. It shows how the process of going through a knowledge-to-action cycle is like 51

climbing ladders to achieve what seems like great results, only to have snake pitfalls take the process back down to re-questioning and re-evaluating those results. The poster is based on The Chronic Pain Assessment Toolbox developed in 2014. Townley described that the project was produced for children with disabilities to use 15 chronic pain assessment tools, recommendations and practice points. The toolbox has been used in 8 outpatient clinics by physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, occupational therapists and physical therapists alike.

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Pushing Our Thinking Keynote: Benoît Dupont, Scientific Director, Smart Cybersecurity Network (SERENE-RISC), Canada Research Chair in Security & Technology, Université de Montréal

Dr. Benoît Dupont currently holds the position of Canada Research Chair for Security, Identity, and Technology. He is a Professor at the School of Criminology and the Director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminology, both at the Université de Montréal.

Benoît researches the organizational and technological aspects of changes to both the public and private security sectors including identity theft, bank fraud, information pirating, telecommunications fraud, and emerging cyber-security policies. Professor Dupont’s other research interests include governance of security, community policing, and public -private networks of security. He also has expertise in policing in Quebec and has co -authored several books on the subject.

Knowledge Mobilization & Smart Cybersecurity “A knowledge mobilization network created to improve the general public’s awareness of cybersecurity risks and to empower all to reduce those risks through knowledge.”

Benoît Dupont began his keynote presentation by describing Smart Cybersecurity Newtwork SERENERISC. Joining Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCEs) in 2014, SERENE-RISC is a knowledge mobilization network created to improve the general public’s awareness of cybersecurity risks and to empower all to reduce those risks through knowledge. SERENE-RISC partners include 22 academics, from across 6 disciplines and from 12 universities from Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. Partners also include private sector, public sector members, and 3 not-for-profit organizations. Fifty-percent of the network researchers are social scientists and fifty-percent are computer scientists. Using a crossdisciplinary structure to connect and share knowledge, sociologists work with anthropologists, while criminologists and lawyers work with political scientists, industry partners (such as DELL, CGI and Symantec), and government/intelligence agencies with NGOs to illustrate the diversity of intersections within the network.

“How do we use technology and develop new habits to use technology safely?”

Dupont stated that over the past 25 years a “digital revolution/evolution” has occurred in mass society causing a massive shift from an industrial society to a digital society connecting everyone and providing private information through a variety of digital devices. This has created a shift from what was previously considered an information technology challenge for computer scientists to a broader human problem. Dupont stressed “this is no longer a technology problem.” As part of this new broader human problem within a digital system, policy changes must also occur to regulate and protect society. We are at the intersection of understanding what technology and machines are able to do, how humans behave

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with machines, and the forces regulating the interaction between machines and humans. The first important point regarding this near future challenge is how do we manage technology securely?

We currently use and need to secure desktop and laptop computers, tablets and smartphones. Very soon, as we move into the “Internet of Things” there is a need to secure refrigerators, automobiles, airplanes, sensors and other kinds of machines that will all be connected to the Internet. By 2020, it is estimated 20-billion devices will be connected to the Internet. These devices are marketed and produced by companies that may not necessarily be paying attention to security, stated Dupont.

“We are going to have to be mobilizing knowledge to a very broad area of stakeholders…to provide safe access to the Internet” The second important point regarding this near future challenge, according to Dupont, is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). “We are no longer talking about science fiction. We are dealing on a daily basis with AIs,” he reminded the audience. Anyone using Google, Dupont points out, AI is already being used. With the increasing quantity of data that will continue to grow, humans will not be able to manage without the assistance of AI. “We are going to have to be thinking about how we are going to mobilize knowledge to machines.”

According to Dupont, many of the decisions humans currently make will have to be outsourced to machines, including security decisions. In turn machines will also create risks for the systems needing protection. This means that it will be necessary to create designs to assist machines in making the right decisions on behalf of humans, said Dupont.

On top of this is the rise of “manufactured risks” created by humans, said Dupont, providing examples like Edward Snowden, cyber-criminals, terrorists, “hactivists”, and government hackers. Also included on this list…squirrels! Squirrels are the number one threat because they chew and destroy the cable fibers needed for Internet connections, stated Dupont.

“While we are doing knowledge mobilization, other humans are doing knowledge mobilization against us.”

Dupont warns that just as we can provide knowledge mobilization for benefit, there are counter knowledge mobilizers who do, what he calls, “adversarial knowledge mobilization.” Just as researchers use knowledge mobilization for good, there are those using knowledge mobilization strategies directly against those helpful benefits.

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In addition to negative and adversarial knowledge mobilization being done, Dupont also knowledge mobilization is also utilized as a marketing tool. Security companies and anti-virus companies selling products have identified knowledge mobilization as a extremely useful marketing tool. Dupont said these companies are organizing “testing” events and knowledge mobilization conferences. To demonstrate, Dupont played a short promotional video showing the extensive resources these companies have had their disposal to provide tropical beach locations for these events - with plenty of socializing, games, dancing and cocktails. He used the video to show how such “conferences” by large wealthy security companies can actually challenge the efforts of security efforts being done at conferences supported by government funding – a reality faced by competing against the private sector.

“Before we can do knowledge mobilization we have to ‘de-mobilize’ useless knowledge.”

Dupont said there is, what he calls, useless knowledge floating around often being promoted and marketed by the private sector. He pointed to a newspaper headline citing a reputable business journal which stated that cyber-crime costs are projected to reach 2-trillion dollars by 2019. The goal of this type of erroneous information, said Dupont, is to create fear and uncertainty – and to ultimately get people to purchase inadequate cybersecurity products. This type of hype detracts from the legitimate cybersecurity research being done which often can become exhausting to work against.

One of the areas legitimate cybersecurity researchers have been working on is the use of password protection, said Dupont. He asked for a show of hands from the audience to indicate how many people are required to change their password on a regular basis as a policy at work. Almost everyone in the audience raised their hands. This type of “evidence” to change your password frequently is based on “no evidence at all,” he said. Dupont informed the group that knowing one must change your password on a regular basis is bad practice as it means people are choosing easy passwords to remember instead of a single complicated password that can be kept for years, which is itself a cybersecurity threat. When applying knowledge mobilization to password security we need to be thinking more about what policies are useless and creatively implementing evidence-based policies.

“We need to cut through the signal-to-noise ratio in cybersecurity.”

Dupont stated a web search of the word ”cybersecurity” provides at least 8-thousand available posts. So how do we filter through all of this data noise around cybersecurity? To answer this question his network has created and publishes a cybersecurity digest that provides regularly accessible research summaries around the latest research being done on cybersecurity. The SERENE-RISC network chooses ten recent research articles and selects those that are able to answer a very applied and practical question. The research summaries provide three levels of readership: a short one to two-line synopsis, a

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longer one paragraph summary, or a more in-depth one page of the original research article with full accessible references. SERENE-RISC also provides knowledge mobilization event videos and slides on their website which can also be accessed and downloaded, as well as a short Q&A section highlighting the event presentations.

“Scaling? How do we engage hundreds of people without increasing resources?”

Dupont talked about SERENE-RISC’s online knowledge platform, which can scale from 50-300 members in a few minutes and engage them with content designed to be accessed and scaled up to many individuals at the same time quite easily. The knowledge platform also provides email digests of content sent directly to requested email addresses based on key word searches. The SERENE-RISC online knowledge platform is able to access 20,000 scholarly research papers within five minutes to provide easily accessible content on a daily basis. Scaling is also accomplished by using “fulcrum institutions” such as public libraries and though partnership with financial institutions. Such partnerships provide leveraging of content outwards from the network by creating branding around cybersecurity and greater awareness of cybersecurity issues for the general public, including the big bank’s own advertising efforts to as many as 17-million people without the network having to spend a single dollar, he said.

Dupont spoke about the network’s ability to map and aggregate content from sources across Canada involved in cybersecurity to manage and collect the flow of the knowledge and create further partnerships by analyzing social network patterns. SERENE-RISC has been collecting social network data around knowledge mobilization activities including government agencies, researchers, private-sector agencies, NGOs, knowledge brokers, and other stakeholders.

Dupont concluded by urging anyone working in knowledge mobilization to consider two things: how will they incorporate future interactions and utilize machines in their work, and how will they deal with the private-sector as collaborators or competitors as part of future knowledge mobilization efforts.

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Session 4: 7 Minute Presentations Presenter(s) Abstract Shari Graydon

Why Mobilize Knowledge Through News Media Commentary?

Why are hundreds of scholars working to translate their knowledge into 650-word commentaries for dissemination through mainstream newspapers and sites? Some say they’ve discovered that doing so allows them to make more of a difference than all their academic publications combined. Others cite the potential to dispel ignorance, ignite engagement, and attract the attention of decision-makers. Serendipitous connections result in new research ideas, unexpected partners or previously unimagined opportunities to exert meaningful influence. This 7-minute presentation will explore the benefits of crafting, controlling and delivering research and evidenceinformed opinions to a broad audience with the help of mainstream media. It will invite participants to consider who they’d like to reach, debate the most likely vehicles, and brainstorm the upside for themselves and the issues they care most about.

Elin Gwyn

Keeping the “yawn-factor” out of Kmb Have you ever had a moment where you paused and did not know if you could keep the knowledge mobilization interest and commitment going, year after year? And wondered what else could be done to maintain exciting and engaging KMb over the long-term in this fast-paced, changing, resource¬-limited world?

This short presentation with provide 5 quick tips on keeping the “boring and the tired” out of your KMb work. By the end of the presentation you will have a strategy and insights for (re)inspiration your KMb passion and creativity.

Vicky Ward

Can knowledge sharing questions replace knowledge mobilisers?

Many of the organisations that we work with as knowledge mobilisers are over-stretched and cash-strapped. They constantly need to find ways of improving the services they offer, reducing costs and making the best use of limited resources. To achieve this staff need to be able to share knowledge in order to come up with innovative ideas and solutions.

Knowledge mobilisation is all about enabling people to share knowledge, but so often the approaches that we use seem to rely on employing individual knowledge mobilisers (e.g. knowledge brokers) to do that work. This is expensive so we need to start

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asking whether there is another (cheaper and more sustainable) way of prompting knowledge sharing.

In this presentation I will focus on an alternative - asking knowledge sharing questions. This is an approach that I have been using to help people working in health and social care to share knowledge with each other. My aim is to develop a series of questions which people can ask themselves (and each other) as a way of helping them to share knowledge and ideas.

But as I’ve been reflecting on my experiences I have been forced to ask myself some difficult questions. These include - Can anyone ask these questions? How easy is it to get them heard?

Can they ever replace us as knowledge mobilisers? During this presentation I will share my experiences and pose some of these questions to open a space for debate and reflection.

Dwayne Van Eerd, Siobhan Cardoso,

Work and health researchers’ knowledge transfer practices Objectives: Applying research evidence into practice is important to improve practice and reduce the burden of workplace injury and illness. The objectives of this study are to 1) document and describe the dissemination activities and the KTE experiences of research staff within work and health research organizations; and 2) identify opportunities for improving KTE in work and health research.

Methods: An online survey was developed to enable selfevaluation of KTE activities of work and health research staff from three research institutes in North America. The survey was administered to 79 work and health research staff across organizations. Reminders were sent one, three, and six weeks after initial invitation. Ethics approval was received from the University of Waterloo, Office of Research Ethics.

Results: Fifty-six responses (71% response rate) were received from researchers (36.5%), research assistants (52%), and KTE specialists (11.5%). The average tenure in respective roles was 7.6 years. Survey results show that work and health research staff considered dissemination and KTE to be important. A wide variety of dissemination activities were reported, including faceto-face meetings, and workshops. Overall, respondents felt confident in their abilities to perform KTE activities.

Conclusions: Work and health research staff reported various KTE activities beyond the typical academic approaches of ‘publish and present’. Research staff felt they had the capacity for KTE and felt quite confident about their level of interaction with knowledge users. However, they reported that processes supporting KTE as well as the promotion and evaluation of research use could be improved.

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Alison L Palmer, Eleanor Setton, Katy Wong

Janet Harris

Enhancing capacity to address environmental health in First Nations communities CAREX Canada is a university-based project that informs efforts to reduce Canadians’ exposures to known and suspected carcinogens in workplaces and communities. Under the leadership of partners at the University of Victoria Spatial Sciences Research Lab (UVIC-SSRL), and in collaboration with the First Nations Environmental Health Innovation Network (FNEHIN, based at the Assembly of First Nations), CAREX Canada has been working since 2009 to mobilize information about environmental quality in First Nations communities. Most recently, with the support of a CIHR Knowledge to Action grant and partners at the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact, we’ve collaborated with four First Nations groups on a series of Cancer and the Environment projects. These projects used a knowledge mobilization and exchange approach informed by principles of self-determination and OCAP (ownership, control, access, and possession) to assess and address concerns around environmental quality. Through the projects, we hosted multiple workshops and developed a series of tailored, accessible resources – from reports and fact sheets to interactive games and maps – to enhance the capacity of the groups to better understand local concerns, and use that understanding to identify priorities for improving environmental quality. A web portal was developed to house and share these resources with other First Nations groups interested in addressing issues around environmental quality in their respective regions. This presentation will discuss the process we undertook to initiate, develop, and evaluate these projects, and some lessons learned for working with First Nations groups on issues around environmental quality.

Keeping up with the Joneses: Mobilising learning from evaluation Many large scale evaluations of health and social care take time to complete, and the findings as a result are not used because the policy window has moved on to more urgent issues.

Transdisciplinary approaches to evaluation have the potential to promote sharing of knowledge and learning across different disciplines. When there is shared learning, however, the knowledge generated can be co-opted when formulating policy for modifying government programmes. Knowledge brokers need to negotiate how the knowledge is used by different actors, who may respectively expect that evaluation findings are (a) ‘rigorous’ from an academic perspective, with the assumption that the programme that is being evaluated will remain relatively stable during the research period;

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(b) timely in terms of informing policy about which programmes to continue; (c) inclusive in the sense that ideas generated will be carried forward by a collaboratively by those involved.

In reality, the way that knowledge is used to develop programmes can reflect the predominant way of working within a sector, and reflect tradtioinal relationships of power and control despite the apparent successs of transdisciplinary working.

This Catalyst Presentation will present dilemmas encountered as a result of rapidly evolving programme development, which illustrate the challenges of brokering knowledge across health, social care and other sectors that include non-profit community organisations, city council and public health. The key issues will be identified from the perspective of the knowledge broker, leaving time for the participants to contribute solutions and suggestions based on their experiences.

Nadia Minian, Aliya Noormohamed, Peter Selby

Developing Evidence Based, Community Sensitive Resources While there is a growing interest in using Evidence Based Practice (EBP) in medicine, many scholars fear that EBP promotes a “cookbook” approach to medicine, ignoring patients’ values and preferences. There are few methodologies to help users combine EBP with patient knowledge and values.

Based on findings that the combined use of alcohol and tobacco confer a multiplicative, positively associated risk for aerodigestive and other related cancers, the Nicotine Dependence Services (NDS) at CAMH set out to develop resources that would help smokers who drink above guidelines reduce their drinking.

The goal was to design the resources that would be both evidence based as well as community sensitive. Integrating these two elements requires steps that engage the communities of people for whom health programs are designed. This respectful and democratic approach to knowledge translation values research as well as community members’ expertise about their experience with a health issue and the complexity of factors in their lives affecting their capacity to be healthy.

In this presentation we will describe the community engagement approach the NDS used to contextualize Evidence Based Practice by developing alcohol reduction resources in collaboration with participants from the community of interest. The end product is an evidence-based, community sensitive resource that will be shared across the majority of primary health care settings in Ontario.

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Darren Levine, Michelle Garraway, Laura Stephan

Re-defining the end user – From recipient to partner The Social Services Department of The Regional Municipality of Durham provides important human services to the residents of Durham Region. The department has over 1,800 staff offering a range of services across the lifespan through six divisions – Business Affairs and Financial Management, Children’s Services, Family Services, Housing Services, Income and Employment Support, and Long-Term Care and Services for Seniors.

In 2011, an Innovation and Research Unit was formed within the Office of the Commissioner of Social Services to support a culture of inquiry and creativity and provide support to growing and implementing new ideas and approaches to service delivery. An important area of focus for the Innovation and Research Unit has been knowledge mobilization. Over the past several years, the Unit has begun to act in a ‘knowledge broker’ capacity, working with academic and community partners to bridge research and practice. Through this work, a climate in which research informs practice and practice informs research is beginning to emerge.

This session will challenge participants to re-examine the definition of practitioner as end-user, and to consider the potential benefits of shifting practitioners to partners in research.

We will discuss how the Innovation & Research Unit is working to build capacity for research impact in local communities, and will explore opportunities and challenges for collaborative research in municipal social services and how this approach can increase engagement, impact, and evaluation successes. This session will bring together practitioners from the Social Services sector and academics to work together in a ‘hands-on’ exercise to develop strategies to enhance research-practitioner partnerships and improve research impacts.

Susan Renoe, David Phipps

Broader Impacts without Borders US National Science Foundation applications require a Broader Impact strategy. SSHRC applications require a knowledge mobilization strategy. CIHR applications require a knowledge translation strategy and some NSERC applications require a commercialization strategy. However, no PhD program trains grad students to complete these sections of grant applications.

Nor does any faculty member receive training in how to actually create broader impacts of their research. ResearchImpactRéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) in Canada and the National Alliance for Broader Impacts (NABI) in the US provide training, tools and supports to help researchers not only complete these sections of their grant applications but to actually create the

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conditions to maximize impact of research and to evaluate and report on impacts. Susan Renoe (NABI) and David Phipps (RIR) will compare and contrast the policy drivers for broader impacts in the US and Canada. They will look at the institutional contexts for institutional supports for broader impacts and will imagine their roles in 20 years when they are retired and reflecting on a career of supporting research impact.

Elinor Keshet

Shaking Up the System: From Translation to Uptake Knowledge translation is not simply about sharing what we have learned from the evidence, but about affecting change in either practice or policy. As health issues become more complex due to the intertwining of demographics, technology, science, and cultural transformations, it is critical to design knowledge translation interventions and approaches that not only reflect the needs of a population, but unpack and design for multiple contexts and end users.

Design thinking is a means of infusing creativity into knowledge, action, needs-based explorations, and co-creative activities. My presentation acknowledges the importance of tailored and targeted knowledge translation methods, and aims to answer the question: How might we design for a user’s context to help knowledge spread? The presentation shares tools, methods, and case studies that will help us, as practitioners, uncover key insights, challenges, and opportunities to make work more accessible and ultimately drive greater public utility and engagement.

Elizabeth Doyle, Sacha Nadeau

Knowledge Mobilization Across Sectors: Success Stories and Ever-New Beginnings from the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging To say that the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) has a complex structure to navigate is a vast understatement. Comprised of 20 research teams, 8 national platforms, and 4 cross-cutting programs, the consortium’s direction and vision are largely set by an umbrella philosophy that strives to meet the information needs of policymakers, people with lived experience of dementia, frontline care providers, and partner organizations.

Within this system, you will find our Knowledge Translation and Exchange (KTE) cross-cutting program, led by international dementia expert, Dr. Ken Rockwood, and supported by Knowledge Translation Coordinator, Sacha Nadeau, and Knowledge Broker, Elizabeth Doyle. By nurturing new working

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relationships and the adoption of new knowledge, KTE helps position CCNA as a global leader in increasing understanding of neurodegenerative diseases, working towards prevention, and improving the quality of life of those living with dementia.

Specifically, KTE determines areas of priority knowledge needs for CCNA’s vast audiences, brokers collaborations, and plays a central role in mobilizing (and motivating) knowledge exchange.

Recently, KTE conducted a needs assessment, the results of which reveal systems-wide gaps in meeting knowledge needs, identifies new opportunities to bridge those gaps, and provides our program with concrete steps to take to work within the complexities of our system.

In this session, we will present a high-level overview of the CCNA’s structure; provide lessons learned from our practice with take-home messages for audience members; as well as a highlevel overview of our navigational strategy (informed by our needs assessment findings). From this foundation, we will open our ideas up to discussion with the hope of walking away with a KT community-informed roadmap that can be applied to refine our strategy and identify missing pieces.

David Phipps, Julie Bayley

Research Impact Literacy This impact agenda has evolved differently across international boundaries. In Canada, funder-driven focus on knowledge transfer and knowledge mobilization has placed the emphasis on the process of creating impacts from research (the “how” of impact). Conversely central government mandated research impact assessment in the UK via the Research Excellence Framework has placed precedence on the demonstrable impacts (the “what” of impact). Increasingly there is also attention on the skills needed for research impact practitioners who work to create impact and collect evidence of the direct benefits of research. For successful generation and narration of impact these research impact practitioners need to be able to support the creation of impact and assess and articulate the ensuing impacts. Drawing on the literature of health literacy we present the concept of ‘impact literacy’, the combined understanding of practices that create impact (“how”), the methods to assess and articulate impacts (“what”) and the successful integration of these via personal action (“who”) into benefits of research beyond the academy. This presentation will explore the intersection of these three research impact elements and consider the progression from beginner (aware) through intermediate (engaged) to advanced (critical) literacy.

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Kim Wright

Whiteboard video as a core tool to expand reach for dissemination of information about novel Canadian research and associated results In 2015, AllerGen NCE launched a short whiteboard video to share how 3,500 children and their families involved in AllerGen’s Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study are helping to change Canada's approach to managing and preventing allergies and asthma.

A social media strategy expanded the video’s reach to diverse stakeholders including parents, families, policymakers, researchers, healthcare practitioners, and the lay media. Within six months, the video received over 5,000 YouTube views and was awarded first place in a CIHR knowledge translation competition evaluating impact, relevance, accessibility and creativity.

This introductory video has become a core tool to create awareness for the “what, why and how” of the CHILD Study and its early scientific findings, and it is embedded into AllerGen’s broader public relations, communications, KMb and social media strategies. It is also a springboard for AllerGen’s 2016-2017 video series that will share specific research results and knowledge emerging from the CHILD Study relevant to target audiences.

Simon Maag

Potentials and limitations of web‐based portals to support knowledge exchange between science, policy, and Practice Knowledge exchange and knowledge co­production at the interface between science, practice and policy require a broad set of skills. However, few scholars have received the necessary training to do exchange efficiently.

Recognizing this lack of skills, research institutions and other organizations around the world have implemented various measures to support scientists in their efforts to exchange knowledge with policy makers and practitioners. Often, these measures include web­based portals with information on how to make knowledge exchange properly. Portals usually provide handbooks, tool­boxes, annotated bibliographies or glossaries.

But what can portals achieve and what are their limits? In my presentation, I first discuss strengths (e.g. easily accessible entry points) and weaknesses (e.g. the difficulty of transferring tacit knowledge) of web portals as well as trade­offs (e.g. between comprehensiveness and usability). Second, results from a series of interviews are presented to indicate the most wanted contents that (potential) users expect from such portals. I conclude with

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some suggestions on how to exploit the full potential of portals and outline possible extensions to compensate for their weaknesses.

Hilda Smith

Accessibility in KMb I believe that knowledge mobilization, as an interconnecting site between communities and research, can be a space to bring community concerns to research groups. That there is a need to move beyond connecting people. There is a need to help communities and researchers to build sustainable relationships that allow long term changes to policy, economy and society. But how do we do this?

I believe that disability studies and activism—a space that has thrived because of the ongoing relationships between community and research—is a source of knowledge for addressing community concerns. A community concern within the area of disability is accessibility. As a disability activist and researcher I have had to learn a lot about the variety of accessibility needs while developing disability related projects.

The need to create an accessible space to ensure that any marginalized groups can participate is something I have grown passionate about.

One project I’ve worked on is an inter-university/community conference that aims to be fully accessible. This conference has been successful in transforming a space that usual excludes certain folks into a forum for building connections. Ongoing conversations between people and groups, whom wouldn’t have otherwise interacted, are creating space for new ideas and projects to flourish. While this project has been successful, there was a need to reconsider how to plan the conference in order to ensure that accessible was considered during the entire planning process.

By sharing my experience in helping to organize the interuniversity/community conference I’d like to start a discussion about accessibility within the knowledge mobilization field. Some of the questions I’d like to get people think about are: Are there concerns about accessibility, what are those concerns, how do they affect who is included within the spaces we create, who is excluded from spaces, if, these concerns are present, where and how do we address these issues?

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Lupin Battersby, Theresa Hughes, Marina Morrow

Working across difference and tension: Building a community of practice in peer led community mental health

Joann Starks

Knowledge Translation support in the US for disability, independent living, and rehabilitation research

From a CIHR Operating Grant that supported a pan-Canadian, interdisciplinary team of social scientists exploring psychiatric deinstitutionalization and the post-asylum era, emerged a number of knowledge sharing initiatives. Some of these are: a History of Madness in Canada archives; Caring Minds: youth, mental health and community teaching units; More for the Mind: Histories of Mental Health for the Classroom; History in Practice curriculum; and “After the Asylum? Legacies of Community Mental Health”, a two day multi-media conference. The final event showcased all the work and outputs of the project to a diverse audience of academics, practitioners, and community members. Conference attendees experienced the value of working across sectors and groups. During the final session of the event exploring ‘where from here’ a decision was made to start a community of practice (CoP), connecting people who are engaged in peer led or driven initiatives in community mental health. The CoP purposively developed as cross-sector. The focus of this presentation is on the experience, dynamics, and challenges of working across multi-sector, interdisciplinary, and lived experience to create a mechanism for sustainable collaboration and knowledge sharing. Challenges that we have and are continually working through range from competing perspectives on mission and acceptable resources to access, to addressing feelings of alienation and stigma, all of which are hotly contested in the mental health community. Multiple aspects of the themes of structure and sustainability apply and will be explored for further discussion within the context of this experience.

The presentation will describe the support provided to researchers by KT Centers funded through the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), a part of the US government’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Center on KT for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (KTDRR) serves as the ‘flagship’ KT Center for working with all of the grantees to support their knowledge translation activities and outcomes.

Other KT Centers funded by this agency include: • KT for Technology Transfer • KT for Employment Research

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• Model Systems KT Center (focusing on Spinal Cord, Brain, and Burn Injury researchers and service providers) • Americans with Disabilities Network KT Center • National Rehabilitation Information Center (NARIC) • Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information & Exchange (CIRRIE) Other projects with a KT focus will also be discussed.

Sylviane Duval

(NOTE : The KT Coordinator for NIDILRR will be invited to participate, if she is able to attend. If representatives from CIHR are in attendance, we will also invite them to join the discussion.)

With a “Nudge” and a wink: Persuading people to make the right decisions In their book “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness,” Thaler and Sunstein propose that people can be influenced by small changes in context. A simple example is stocking healthy food at eye level where it is more likely to be seen and bought. The authors call this choice architecture or libertarian paternalism (people should be free to do what they like but it’s okay for choice architects to try to influence their behaviour for the better).

People influence each other all the time in this way. Think of the gruesome images front and centre on tobacco products or the opt-in default on magazine subscriptions.

This short presentation will highlight the situations in which people tend to benefit rom a nudge and why. It will leave attendees with the following questions to discuss: • Is choice architecture a suitable approach for KT? • Does it stand the test of evolving evidence (don’t eat eggs; too much cholesterol. False alarm, go ahead, eat eggs)?

• Is it too manipulative in spite of the “choice” it offers?

Amanda Cooper

The dollars and “Sense” of funding knowledge mobilization across the globe.

Researchers are under increasing pressure to mobilize their research more widely with non-academic audiences and to demonstrate the impact of their work (Mitton et al., 2007; Nutley et al., 2007); however, little is known about a) how to actually measure research use and its impact or b) about how funding agencies globally are promoting and supporting KMb and research impact agendas.

Funding agencies are important research brokering organizations as they support national research infrastructure and shape research agendas through their requirements for researchers.

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Tetroe et al. (2008) conducted an international study to explore knowledge translation policy, expectations, and activities of health research funding agencies. No empirical study of this kind exists for social science funding agencies; as a result, this study seeks to replicate the Tetroe et al. (2008) study for Social Science funding agencies in Canada, the USA, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand.

The study makes two significant contributions. First, it provides empirical evidence comparing how social science funding agencies globally are approaching research mobilization and impact – an area that has not been systematically explored.

Second, it provides an overview of resources (created by funders) for researchers to increase the impact of their work.

This catalyst presentation will push the crowd to think about what capacity building efforts are needed in relation to KMb from funders – for researchers, for universities and for research brokers. It will also challenge the crowd to generate ideas to do KMb on a shoestring budget.

Chantal Barton, Ursula Gobel, Patrick Couperus

Mobilizing Research Knowledge in the Social Sciences and Humanities – SSHRC’s Imagining Canada’s Future Initiative / Mobiliser les connaissances scientifiques en sciences humaines – L’initiative Imaginer l’avenir du Canada du CRSH SSHRC has long been seen as a leader in the area of knowledge mobilization through its programs and initiatives. This presentation will serve to engage the KMb community in discussing some specific examples, the general approach and context in which SSHRC has successfully engaged with stakeholders to develop and implement its Imagining Canada’s Future initiative.

Through the Imagining Canada’s Future initiative, SSHRC is building a national dialogue with the academic, public, private and community sectors to collectively address and prepare for the complex challenges facing Canada over the coming decades and meet the rapidly increasing demand for social sciences and humanities research knowledge.

Six future challenge areas that can benefit from social sciences and humanities research and expertise were identified through a rigorous foresight exercise and are now the focus of research analysis and stakeholder engagement activities, including: new ways of learning, the quest for energy and natural resources, indigenous peoples, globalization, emerging technologies and global peak population.

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Through a range of program and program-related activities, SSHRC is: building research preparedness by gaining insights into future challenge areas; informing decision-making across the public, private and community sectors by mobilizing research knowledge; and expanding cross-sector collaboration and partnerships. www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/imagining Christine Provvidenza, Shauna Kingsnorth, Sean Peacocke

Knowledge Translation (KT) Facilitator Network: Building and sustaining KT Culture in Childhood Disability Knowledge mobilization (KMb) plays an important role in advancing evidence-informed care. At Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, putting KMb knowledge, principles, processes and strategies into practice is paramount to achieving excellence in clinical care. This goal forces us to think about how we provide KMb knowledge. How can we best inspire, enable and support our front-line staff with the right tools while building an organizational platform for KMb sustainability?

One mechanism to drive excellence through integration of research, education and clinical care occurs via targeted projects, supported by the hospital’s Centres for Leadership program.

Project teams are required to provide a KMb plan; however, few healthcare professionals have received formal KMb training.

Without a strong foundation, project success may be impacted.

Evidence to Care (EtC), the hub dedicated to KMb activities at the hospital, is project focused and uses a consultative approach to provide support to staff. In recognizing this knowledge gap and the need for a ‘spread and scale’ approach to build KMb competencies internally, a joint EtC-Centres for Leadership initiative was launched: The Knowledge Translation Facilitator Network (KTFN).

The KTFN has been developed to build capacity of budding KMb champions. This presentation will be used as a sounding board for the KTFN, with the aim to discuss: What is the best way to grow KMb knowledge and make it stick? Where do you draw the line on how much information is enough? Is a network the right vehicle for growing and sustaining KMb organizationally?

Jacky Au Duong, Sarah Bukhari

Strategies for Evaluating Research Promotion in the Digital Landscape: A Case Study Program Evaluation of The Knowledge Translation Portal (KTP) The advent of digital communication channels and social media in recent years has brought a new dimension of research dissemination/knowledge mobilization to the researcher community. These new channels and means of communicating

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have added new, complex, and dynamic layers to the task of mobilizing research into practice, and moving information from universities into communities.

The role of Knowledge Translation Professionals, Research Communicators, and other similar positions is to advise and assist researchers with these ever-daunting tasks. Yet, people in these roles are not entirely immune to the shifting landscape of communication. Without proper training and knowledge, even research communicators may be unaware of how digital communication activities can be evaluated for effectiveness.

Through a case study program evaluation of the Knowledge Translation Portal (KTP) at the Faculty of Community Services (Ryerson University), this catalyst presentation will share a mixed-methods approach to evaluating the effectiveness of research promotion and dissemination activities on websites and on social media. This is a work-in-progress submission, and we are sharing our proposed evaluation metrics, methodologies, and preliminary findings. For the discussion component, we will facilitate a roundtable on the challenges and strategies for using digital analytics as evidence of impact.

The KTP is an in-house KT service for geared at synthesizing research and disseminating plain-language summaries. The KTP has been disseminating these summaries through their website and on LinkedIn and Twitter. The KTP has a year’s worth of web analytics and social media insights that can provide clues to whether its communications have been effective.

Joanne Telfer, Alison L. Palmer, AnneMarie Nicol

Evaluating impact by analyzing reach: A look at CAREX Canada’s knowledge mobilization efforts around a known carcinogen CAREX Canada is a national surveillance project that estimates the number of Canadians exposed to substances associated with cancer in workplace and community environments. Radon, a radioactive gas that is the second leading cause of lung cancer, is one of our as a high priority environmental exposure and is a focus of CAREX Canada’s knowledge mobilization (KM) efforts.

Our KM objective with respect to radon is to broker knowledge and play a networking role to help support actions towards exposure reduction. During Radon Awareness Month, we increased our targeted KM activities to expand our reach and assess the difference that reach may have made in increasing awareness and action on radon exposure.

Reach is the extent to which CAREX’s network of ties connects it to distant and diverse partners, and it is captured by looking at

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the number of individuals who engaged with the project over a period of time. It is an important metric for measuring the impact of KM activities. Our targeted KM activities included delivering presentations, developing publications and other tailored resources, messaging and engagement on social media, and providing evidence and expertise. Establishing strong relationships with key organizations interested in radon was essential in expanding our reach.

A combination of methods was used to capture reach, including website and twitter analytics and materials and presentation tracking. Our targeted efforts resulted in a significant increase in engagement and reach. Understanding an organization’s reach from KM efforts helps to assess the impact of these activities and informs future efforts.

Nadia Minian, Peter Selby

Putting Evidence into Action : Implementing Smoking Cessation Practices in Primary Care Despite considerable investments in health research in Ontario, a significant gap remains between evidence and health care policy and practice, costing millions to the health care system, and to the wellbeing of Ontarians. The Nicotine Dependence Service (NDS) at CAMH has adapted the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Interactive Systems Framework to develop a knowledge translation framework for planning, implementing, evaluating and sustaining tobacco control interventions in Ontario. The framework helps explain the integrated approach used by the NDS to facilitate primary care settings as they introduce evidence based approaches into their practice. The adaptation of this framework has allowed the NDS to: 1. Translate several research findings into accessible and friendly formats (e.g. videos, websites, manuals).

2. Train over 5,000 practitioners from 9 provinces, 3 territories, over 36 disciplines, and over 800 organizations 3. Partner with 81% of all Family Health Teams in Ontario ; 90% of Ontario’s Community Health Centers ; 53% of Ontario’s Addiction Agencies; and 100% of Ontario’s Public Health Units (PHUs) to implement care pathways for smokers.

4. Providing evidence-based treatment for tobacco dependence to over 156,000 smokers.

Anne-Marie Alarco, Vanessa Laflamme, Marie-Ève Desormeaux

Mobilizing knowledge on cell therapy and regenerative medicine in Canada: challenges and opportunities CellCAN (www.cellcan.com) is a Knowledge Mobilization Centre of Excellence created in 2014. Our mission is to mobilize

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stakeholders across Canada to significantly advance regenerative medicine and cell therapy research and clinical development.

As CellCAN enters into its third year of existence, several hurdles were encountered on its path and we would like to engage into an interactive discussion to present them and envision innovative solutions.

Indeed, CellCAN has a unique opportunity as a knowledge mobilization network to significantly contribute to enable the cell therapy revolution in Canada.

CellCAN’s stakeholders range from researchers, clinicians, granting bodies, industry stakeholders, charitable organizations, members of the government, patient representatives and the public. We thus need to have a multitude of tools and tactics to reach all these targets. Furthermore, cell therapy and regenerative medicine is a highly advance and specialized field.

Expertise and knowledge sharing although in principal supported, becomes a real challenge due to various barriers such as intellectual property claims. This paradox is critical to tackle since we aim to harmonize best practices across cell therapy manufacturing center in Canada.

The Canadian cell therapy ecosystem is complex, involves multiple players and up to now has been resistant in coordinating its efforts for knowledge transfer, exchange or mobilization. As CellCAN is a new and small organization, we would like to benefit from the experience of others to identify the best ways to reach all of our target audiences and promote collaborations amongst the most recalcitrant.

Jill Fairbank, Alison Bullock, Emma Barnes

Planning for sustainability in knowledge broker roles: can it be done?

Background Use of health service-academic-industry collaborations is growing in the UK with knowledge brokers (KBs) playing a key role in linking producers with the users of knowledge and innovation, to close the research-practice gap. Yet little is known about how these roles could be sustained beyond short-term funding.

Methods A qualitative case-study design was used to study the work of 13 knowledge brokers by collecting data from: observation of 20 meetings and events, documentation, 72 audio-diaries, and 50 semi-structured interviews with the KBs, their line managers (LM) and those they supported (“Links�).

Results Within our sample of 13 KBs, 7 were on short-term appointments tied to a fellowship or unstable funding stream. Lack of

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sustainability meant that KB roles are seen as risky and lacking traditional forms of recognition in terms of career progression and opportunities. We found enabling factors operating at the individual, organisational and system-level but with varying success across the KBs. Our research points to the importance of the relational aspect of knowledge brokering as the key enabler and therefore brings attention to sustaining the individuals themselves in the KB role to foster longer-term relationships with knowledge users.

Discussion Much attention has been given to sustaining the improvements KBs bring to practice through such tools as the IHI’s Model for Sustainability. This presentation will present our findings on how KBs secured sustainability of their roles in order to stimulate discussion on whether a similar model could be applied to individuals rather than projects or initiatives.

Caroline DuvieusartDĂŠry, Rebecca Moore

Beyond the Broker: Sustaining Partnerships in Contexts of Staff Turnover Much attention has been paid over the past years to the crucial role of knowledge brokers in creating the relationships and contexts that enable effective knowledge mobilization, as well as to the many skills and experiences that these individuals bring to the practice of this work. In this field where so much of our work relies on personal interactions, trust, and long-term relationships, how can we build on the strengths of the broker model while ensuring that our partnerships can be sustained beyond the engagement of specific individuals? How can intermediary organizations facilitate the transfer and sharing of knowledge and relationships, and limit their vulnerability to staff changes and turnover?

This presentation will look into this tension and explore the need for intermediary organizations to create sustainable knowledge and relationships management systems. We will share examples of the tools and strategies that we developed in two knowledge mobilization units at the University of Guelph, and see how these helped us (or not!) avoid the loss of knowledge and relationships in the context of major staff changes. We hope to engage in a broader conversation with participants on the challenges associated with knowledge management and mobilization for intermediary organizations (internally and externally), and the technological, organizational or policy strategies that have been used to facilitate continuous relationships with partners and audiences.

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Luc Dancause

Beyond stereotypes: A consultant’s contribution to enduring knowledge mobilization Bien des stéréotypes circulent au sujet des consultants. On dit que ce sont des personnes qui nous chargent beaucoup d’argent pour ne dire que ce que l’on sait déjà ou encore pour ramener tous les problèmes à leur seul champ d’expertise. Pourtant, quand on y regarde de plus près, on constate non seulement que ces énoncés sont sans fondement pour un grand nombre de personnes adoptant le rôle de conseiller, mais qu’il s’agit d’acteurs qui sont en mesure d’avoir un apport tout à fait bénéfique, et unique, au champ d’activité dans lequel ils évoluent. En intervenant dans de nombreux secteurs, parfois relativement distants et sans connexion préalable, les consultants agissent comme des agents pollinisateurs. Ils permettent à de nombreuses organisations ou milieux d’être exposés et (parfois) d’intégrer des savoirs, savoir-faire ou savoirêtre qui leur sont nouveaux et qu’ils n’auraient peut-être jamais connus sans la présence de ce consultant. En agissant de la sorte, les consultants permettent donc aux pratiques éprouvées ou émergentes de circuler et poursuivre leur développement dans de nouveaux environnements. Il s’agit d’une dynamique favorable à l’innovation. Pour remplir cette fonction, le consultant doit toutefois compter sur diverses aptitudes et adopter une posture particulière. C’est ce dont il sera question dans cette présentation qui s’intéresse, bien sûr, au secteur de la mobilisation des connaissances.

Elizabeth Grigg

A History of the Present: Critically Reflecting on learning to Knowledge Broker in community This critical reflection details a research project that sought to examine impacts of a research shop under the auspice of their anniversary, or in Foucauldian linguistics a “history of the present SPRC”. The two research questions are interwoven together; how does austerity and the trappings of neo-liberalism influence ‘knowing' history and police the (re) production of knowledge?

Secondly, how is knowledge produced in a qualitative interview?

Ultimately, I hope to answer if Foucauldian ideas of power and knowledge operationalize within evaluation as a method of inquiry.

Science Shops emerged during the rise of ‘austerity’ and growing pressure to make research useful. More directly, funders wanted proof of a return on investment dollars. Part of the work of the Science Shop is then to brand themselves helpful in a conventional, measurable hard data, objective sense to justify their existence. The interstitial, and somewhat invisible spaces, as

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outlined by Bannister 2013 and Schlierf & Meyer (2013), inhibited by the science shop do not lend themselves well to evaluation. Is the knowledge they broker visible? Can its impacts be “found” or “uncovered” within the discourse of a qualitative evaluation? Or is the knowledge itself produced in the interview? Carol Weiss (1979) states “History matters. Institutions matter” (pg. 138).

This paper looks at how history, institutions, roles and community organizations shaped the search for ‘history in the present’.

Anneliese Poetz, David Phipps

Systems and Processes for Knowledge Translation NeuroDevNet is a Federally funded Network Centre of Excellence (NCE) focused on early diagnosis and treatment for children and families affected by neurodisabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorders, Cerebral Palsy and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.

Knowledge Translation is important for helping to move research based interventions and discoveries into practice and policy, for improving the lives of Canadians. NeuroDevNet's KT Core provides a suite of services to assist its researchers and trainees to maximize the impact of their innovations. However, what often remains 'unseen' are the systems and processes that have been developed and deployed to facilitate the smooth provision of these services to the Network and subsequent reporting.

Principles from the field of business analysis have proven indispensable to the KT Core, such as: a) identifying stakeholders who are directly or indirectly affected/involved, b) requirements gathering from all stakeholders, c) design/improvement of processes and products based on this understanding of relevant stakeholders and their needs, as well as obtaining their feedback on proposed solutions. This presentation will describe how NeuroDevNet's KT Core has successfully applied general principles of business analysis (solutions such as process and product design/improvement) using three examples: 1) an improved process for drafting clear language summaries, 2) a new process created and operationalized for developing detailed KT plans (along with development of a custom KT planning product) with four selected research project teams within the Network, and 3) an innovative application of survey software for (cost and time) efficient annual progress reporting. In sum, this presentation will advocate for broader application of business analysis principles for process and product development within the field of knowledge translation.

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Lisa Lachance, Rebecca Singbeil

Strengthening a system with hubs, coaches, kits and community: next steps for the CYCC Network

John Lee, Mandeep Flora

Advancing Knowledge Mobilization through Open Government

The CYCC Network is a Canada-based, international knowledge mobilization network that was created to improve mental health and well-being for vulnerable and at-risk children and youth. It promotes the use of research, best and promising practices, and local knowledge in mental health programming for children and youth in challenging contexts. In its first years of operation, the Network used knowledge synthesis reports, community engagement events, innovation grants and evaluation tools to fulfill its mandate. Results were good – members reported increased KMb activities, new partnerships, and some policy and program change based on evidence and evaluation - but the Network wanted to deepened its impact of policies and programs of its members. In 2015, the Network adopted a new structure with regional Hubs in collaboration with other KMb organizations and is now in the process of building a national, bilingual KMb and evaluation toolkit, creating regional communities of practice to maintain momentum and ensure learning opportunities, and also establishing medium term coaching relationships with a small number of organizations to support their increased use of evidence and evaluation. This short presentation followed by extensive discussion would have the potential to shape how the CYCC Network undertakes its new approach to KMb. We would seek to lead discussions on topics such as what works in KMb coaching, brokering and facilitation and how communities of practice can support increased KMb activity.

The Ministry of Community and Social Services is participating in a two-year pilot project to make de-identified social assistance administrative data available to the research and academic community through StatsCan’s secure Research Data Centres (RDCs) hosted by universities across Canada.

The RDC pilot is in line with our efforts to: • Improve access to the ministry’s social assistance data by the research and academic community, consistent with Ontario’s Open Government initiative • Obtain relevant research to support evidence-based policy decisions and program development • Improve engagement with the academic community.

Ontario’s Open Government initiative objectives are to: • Foster higher levels of civic engagement and become a national leader in public engagement

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• Share more data and strengthen partnerships to support innovation and stronger public policy • Make Ontario a national leader on the proactive release of government information Our proposed presentation will: • Highlight the objectives of the RDC pilot and the partnership between MCSS and StatsCan within the context of Open Government and the themes of transparency, access and collaboration • Outline how the RDC pilot supports evidence based policy making under the ministry’s knowledge and research strategy • Explore the intersection between key components of the pilot (i.e. info-sharing, governance and accountability framework, call for proposals, communication and training) and the ministry’s research agenda and priorities for social assistance as well as knowledge mobilization activities • Preliminary results of the pilot and early successes along with a look at experience in other jurisdictions • Path forward as RDC pilot comes to an end and Open Government matures Sofya Malik, Shasta CarrHarris, Linda Nicolson

Networking to Share Knowledge: The Past, Present and Future of the Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research The Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER) is a tri-partite agreement between the Universities of Toronto and Western, and the Ontario Ministry of Education. To date, the KNAER has focused on building, advancing and applying robust evidence of effective practices through synthesizing state-of-theart knowledge from existing bodies of evidence (from Ontario and beyond), and facilitating networks of policymakers, educators and researchers, working collaboratively, to apply research to practice. It also acts as a ‘knowledge broker’ to facilitate and lead the spread of established and new evidence through networks across Ontario’s policy, education and research communities, and connects with national and international networks.

Strategic knowledge networks and partnerships will continue to be key to the work of the KNAER, as they leverage research, and other forms of knowledge, to support policies, programs and practices that contribute to student achievement and well-being.

To support the activities of thematic networks, the renewed KNAER model includes communities of practice that will involve educators and researchers who will collaborate, co-create and mobilize knowledge on priority themes and questions. The use of

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evidence to inform educational practices will be a central theme for all communities of practice. Tools and resources created by communities of practice will be shared among networks and more broadly.

To date, KNAER projects have created and disseminated more than 1,000 knowledge products (i.e. products or activities created by projects) and an online toolkit.

Sofya Malik, Advancing KMb through Social Media Strategies: Learning from Katina Pollock, the Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research Davoud Sarfaraz (KNAER) Knowledge Mobilization is a social, dynamic, and interactive process. The power of social media can be harnessed to facilitate interactions, develop relationships, and establish digital communities and professional learning networks that support KMb processes. In the context of these encouraging advancements, social media continues to be an integral component of the KNAER, designed to increase the project’s outreach and visibility across the broader education and KMb networks. The KNAER Secretariat’s social media activities include an interactive website, regular blogging and a strong and active presence on Twitter.

The KNAER social media strategy has evolved to increase interactivity with its user audiences. Central to its online presence is a re-designed website that includes blogs and a live Twitter feed for partners, host networks and communities of practice. Central to the project’s social media strategy is the KNAER Twitter account which has increased its followers, daily Tweets, and website traffic. The KNAER team continues developing its use of Twitter from tweets related to KMb and KNAER, to using Twitter to facilitate discussions and active engagement with educators, researchers, practitioners, policy makers and the KMb community.

The presenters will share the successes and challenges of the KNAER project’s social media activities and elaborate on the potential of social media in acting as a platform to develop meaningful connections and strengthen KMb efforts across the sector.

Sofya Malik, Carol Campbell, Linda Nicolson

Collaborating, Sharing and Brokering: The Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER) The Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER) is an innovative approach to mobilizing evidence of effective

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school and classroom practices across Ontario to improve education policy and practice. Established as a tripartite agreement between the Ministry of Education, the University of Toronto and Western University, the KNAER models authentic government-university collaboration. The KNAER builds strategic cross-sector networks and partnerships to leverage research and other forms of knowledge to support policies, programs and practice to support to student achievement and well-being. It also acts as a knowledge broker to facilitate and lead the spread of established and new evidence through networks across Ontario’s policy, education and research communities, and connects with national and international networks.

The presenters will share a model of thematic networks and knowledge brokering functions that can help generate, manage and disseminate bodies of knowledge to build system-wide capacity for knowledge mobilization and evidence use in order to implement evidence-informed education. The session will invoke thought-provoking questions to guide the discussion.

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Session 5: 40 Minute Workshops Presenter(s)

Abstract

Cathy Howe

UK Knowledge Mobilisation Forum: Make sure it does something!

I founded the UK KMb Forum in 2014 after joining the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum 2013. Seeing the enjoyment and benefits gained by bringing peers together from across sectors – and discovering the similarities of the issues and challenges faced – made me wonder if there was scope for something similar in the UK. Peter Levesque encouraged me. Bad man.

The ‘great and good’ in the UK Knowledge Mobilisation world said ‘if it does something then ok, but we don’t need another talking shop’.

I gathered a committee, a venue, sponsorship and speakers. With 3 weeks to go we realised we haven’t told anyone about it.

50 people came, it evaluated really well, and interesting discussions emerged in the ‘open space’ slots with the potential to be turned into action – ‘to do something’. It didn’t break even and it didn’t do anything. So we did it again.

The second year 85 people came. Again, it evaluated really well, and lots of interesting issues were raised in the ‘open space’ sessions. This time some of the ‘open space’ ideas were taken forward by self-selecting Interest Groups including setting up a KMb Global Community of Practice, work to identify KMb competencies, a KMb bathroom reader and collating KMb resources.

The progress made by these Interest Groups will be reported to the Third Annual UK KMb Forum on 10-11 May 2016 in London.

Laura Lennox, Julie Reed

This session will outline what worked and what didn’t in translating ideas raised at an open forum into action for the benefit of the UK and global KMb communities. Forumites will then be asked to identify what could be done to consolidate the work – and to consider whether it can benefit the Canadian Knowledge Mobilization community even more.

The Long Term Success Tool: a pragmatic approach to improve your chances of sustainability?

Significant resources are invested in initiatives to improve the quality of healthcare and deliver better patient outcomes. While many initiatives show patient benefits or improvements in care

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processes initially, these often fail to sustain in the longer term.

Research suggests only about one third of improvement initiatives achieve lasting success. This has been shown to diminish patient and public support for such initiatives and disengage staff from future improvement efforts.

The Long Term Success Tool provides improvement teams with a pragmatic tool to reflect upon 12 key factors influencing sustainability: Commitment to the improvement, Involvement, Skills and capabilities, Leadership, Team functioning, Resources in place, Evidence of benefits, Progress monitored for feedback and learning, Robust and adaptable processes, Alignment with organisational culture and priorities, Support for improvement, and Alignment with external political and financial environment.

The Tool has been designed to explore team perceptions of sustainability and mobilize tacit team knowledge to plan actions which will increase chances of sustainability over-time. Team members provide their overall rating of how their team is performing in each factor and comment on actions needed.

Aggregated team outputs are produced to highlight risks, differences in opinions and facilitate team discussion and debate. *Supplemental documents attached.

This interactive session will introduce the tool and ask participants to consider their own long term goals. Application of the tool will be described and real improvement project reports will be used to explore how the factors impact initiatives in practice and possible actions and solutions will be discussed.

Sue Cragg

A day in the life: Real life examples of knowledge broker core competencies There are a few documents out there that describe what a Knowledge Broker does, but what does this mean in actual practice? This workshop will provide a brief presentation of knowledge broker activities in the context of the core competencies followed by a facilitated discussion for both new and experienced KBs to share experiences, tips, tricks and challenges.

Bring your questions, an issue you are struggling with and your thinking cap and we will work through some great examples together.

Joanne Cummings, Debra Pepler, Wendy Craig

How PREVNet is Mobilizing Canada to Promote Healthy Relationships and Prevent Bullying among Children and Youth PREVNet is a national network of 120+ researchers, 60+ youthserving organizations, governments, and corporations working

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together to prevent bullying and promote healthy relationships for Canadian children and youth. PREVNet has been funded since 2006

by Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence research program.

Through PREVNet’s partnerships, we have been engaged in a societal intervention by co-creating tools and resources to enhance the practices of those involved in the lives of children and youth across the country. We have developed several mechanisms to drive our efforts to foster wide-scale social change including four strategy pillars for knowledge mobilization, working groups to cocreate tools and resources, as well as broader strategies to engage multiple sectors within the country to focus on these important issues related to child and youth wellbeing.

In this presentation, we will draw upon the social marketing framework developed by Maibach and colleagues to identify five communication and marketing strategies for large-scale social cultural change. These include: 1. Mobilizing relevant national organizations to influence local action, 2. Forging a widely shared view of the societal change needed, 3. Using media to influence individual behavior and organizational and policy change, 4.

Diffusing practices at the local level to support change efficiently, and 5. Creating a surveillance system that focuses attention on the targeted change and indicates what works and what does not. We will describe how we have worked collectively over the past 10 years within PREVNet to mobilize Canada with efforts that align with these five strategies to bring about social change.

Emma FirstenKaufman,

EENet Rapid Reviews: Providing evidence to impact system change Located in the Provincial System Support Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Evidence Exchange Network (EENet) is a knowledge exchange network that connects people involved in the field of mental health and substance use across Ontario, including researchers, policymakers, clinicians, and people with lived experience of mental illness and/or substance use. It is our mandate to make Ontario’s mental health and substance use system more evidence-informed, and as a result we receive requests from decision-makers for summaries of the latest research related to pressing policy and system planning questions.

In response, EENet has developed a formal Rapid Review service that is carried out by pairs of Knowledge Brokers.

Rapid Reviews are time-limited collaborative projects that provide evidence to influence decisions more quickly than is possible through traditional systematic reviews. Informed by similar approaches being used by other health sector organizations internationally, as well as by an evaluation of the needs of our stakeholders, EENet’s Rapid Review process has allowed us to

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respond to diverse knowledge users in a timely and organized way.

Our Rapid Reviews are now serving to influence decision-making across programs, organizations, communities, and health systems.

This presentation will provide an overview of EENet’s Rapid Review process, demonstrating to participants a step-by-step method of identifying, synthesizing, and presenting relevant evidence in a usable way to respond to important questions and contribute to system change. It will also speak to some of the initial Rapid Review impacts and the challenges of evaluating such knowledge mobilization activities.

Geneviève Lamy, Geneviève GrégoireLabrecque, Spyridoula Xenocostas

La réalisation d’une activité de formation professionnelle réflexive… dont vous êtes le héros (gamebook style!)

L’atelier proposé sera animé sous la forme d’un jeu questionnaire «dont vous êtes le héros» au cours duquel les participants vivront une expérience interactive mettant à profit leurs connaissances en matière de transfert des connaissances (TC) pour simuler la création d’une formation professionnelle réflexive offerte aux intervenants dans le milieu de la santé et des services sociaux.

Selon les réponses données par les participants au jeu questionnaire, les conférenciers aborderont les barrières et les facilitants à chacune des étapes du processus de TC dans un contexte précis. Donc, l’expertise des participants influencera l’avancement du mandat leur étant proposé - soit la réalisation d’une formation professionnelle réflexive. L’atelier sera divisé en trois parties distinctes : (A) mise en contexte – explication du mandat (5 min); (B) processus de décision via le « jeu questionnaire dont vous êtes le héros » ainsi que le survol des grandes étapes de TC (25 min); (C) dévoilement de l’histoire de cas tel que vécue par l’équipe et le partage des conclusions tirées (10 min). En fonction du parcours choisi par les participants, les conférenciers se baseront sur le cas réel de la mise sur pied d’une formation professionnelle réflexive pour : stimuler la réflexion des participants et solliciter leur expertise à chacune des étapes du processus de TC; identifier les barrières et les facilitants à la réalisation d’une activité de formation professionnelle réflexive; et finalement, proposer un cadre d’analyse permettant de structurer les actions relatives à la mise sur pied d’une formation professionnelle réflexive.

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Session 6: 40 Minute Workshops Presenter(s)

Abstract

Shawna Reibling, Elizabeth Shantz Vanleeuwen, Anne Bergen, Michael Johnny

Knowledge Mobilization: A Variety of career paths Choosing a sustainable career is a driver for graduates and those thinking about working in the area of knowledge moblization. This panel will discuss different models of working in the knowledge mobilzation sector from different perspectives – large institution central knowledge mobilzation unit, small institutional unit, funder and independent consultant.

All members of the panel will outline key take home messages in a one-page handout and speak to 12 slides each.

Answering audience generated questions and resulting discussion will be the majority of the time for this panel.

Elin Gwyn, Jason Tran

Keeping your garden of flourishing networks and partnerships healthy, flowering and weed-free.

Working with your networks and partnerships is key to successful knowledge mobilization. And so what are you doing to keep your networks and partnerships flourishing? Just like a beautiful flower bed or abundant vegetable garden you need to work to ensure your connections and linkages are working to effectively to mobilize knowledge. This workshop will provide insights on how we do this at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs within our KTT activities, our Partnership with University of Guelph and within our long term technology transfer (aka extension) approaches. We will highlight our communication and KTT activities that are working for us and focus on others that are germinating on our wish list.

With our workshop participants, we will explore and expand upon the collective knowledge base for growing and maintaining solid and effective partners and networks and generate the best practices for networking and partnership for the next 5 years. Looking forward to creating bountiful and lush networks and partnering knowledge mobilizing gardens.

Iva Cheung

How accessible is your knowledge product? A four-level framework for accessibility What does it mean for a knowledge product to be accessible?

An Open Access proponent and an advocate for people with disabilities might define “access” differently, but both types of

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access are important for effectively communicating research findings, particularly to the general public.

This information session presents a framework to help creators of knowledge tools and products—whether they be policy briefs, practice guidelines, infographic decision aids for patients, or training webinars—ensure these resources are as accessible as possible. This accessibility framework, meant to complement existing knowledge mobilization and implementation planning tools, consists of four levels: 1. discovery, 2. acquisition, 3. use, and 4. comprehension.

A knowledge product must be free of barriers at all four levels before it can be considered truly accessible. Achieving this accessibility involves a host of best practices from domains including information science, document design, education, communications, and language. This information session brings together these best practices—many evidence based but some derived from professionals' experiences—into a useful checklist that can help knowledge mobilization practitioners (a) assess the accessibility of existing knowledge products and (b) create accessible materials.

Lora Bruyn Martin, Susan Brown, Jaimie Killingbeck

Partnering for sustainable knowledge mobilization in longterm care and retirement living: Stories from the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging and Schlegel Villages The partnership between the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging (RIA) and Schlegel Villages (SV) represents a unique opportunity for aging research to be mobilized across the continuum of services offered in long-term care and retirement living. Seven Schlegel Research Chairs conduct research that has the potential to directly inform practice and policy within SV, a group of 16 retirement and long-term care homes across Southern Ontario.

The RIA and SV are using the KTA framework to develop a collaborative and sustainable approach to KT within this complex healthcare setting. In this presentation we will describe how we are using the KTA framework to guide KT within our organization. We will also share KT successes within our organization and some of the key lessons learned over the past year. For example, we have successfully engaged knowledge users during ‘knowledge creation’ in a number of projects which we believe will lead to interventions that are

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more relevant to those working in the field. In terms of lessons learned, we recognized the need to more effectively identify ‘know/do gaps’ within the organization. As a result, the RIA’s Research Application Specialist is now working directly with Schlegel Villages to better understand operational needs and priorities and make it easier to identify know/do gaps within the organization. Finally, during this presentation we will also describe how we plan to use and adapt the KTA framework as we scale-up and spread interventions to the broader long-term care and retirement sector.

Julia Lalande

Creating a Knowledge Mobilization Strategy in Government – Reflections on a new Approach Knowledge Mobilization is an approach not widely used in government. Research and data units in certain ministries (EDU, MCYS, MCSS, MOHLTC) have developed knowledge mobilization strategies that focus on raising awareness, dissemination and capacity building. However, aspects of knowledge mobilization also apply to other areas of government: Integrated Strategies such as Program Review, Renewal and Transformation, Open Government/Open Data, and Data Integration aim to focus on horizontal collaboration and a continuous cycle of improvement fuelled by evidence. In general there is a heightened focus on Evidence-Based Decision-Making in government through initiatives such as Our Best Advice or the newly created Centre of Excellence for Evidence-Based Decision-Making.

This presentation examines how knowledge mobilization principles can help us foster horizontal collaboration and cocreation, a goal expressed in recent mandate letters to ministers. We will share how PRSO, an office that does not primarily focus on research dissemination and/or data creation, integrates KMb principles into its strategic planning, as well as its outreach, engagement and research activities.

Scott Preston, Sue O’Donnell, Sasha Wood

DOCTalks: Cross-sector Partnerships for Knowledge Mobilization using Documentary Media The potent combination of digital video as a medium and social media as a distribution system has revolutionized the way we share information and mobilize knowledge. Subsequently, individuals and groups with a message to share are increasingly turning to documentary, a mode of filmmaking with a long history that spans traditional media (print, radio, film and tv) and new media (the internet, games, augmented reality). As interest in documentary media expands, so too does the need

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to bring "knowledge producers" together with individuals who have the skills and experience to create and disseminate professional quality content.

DOCTalks Inc. is a not-for-profit organization that promotes cross-sector collaborations to create and share documentary media. More specifically, we work to bring together representatives from cultural industries, academia, not-forprofits, government agencies, charitable foundations, and community enterprises with the aim of generating capacity to fund, create, and mobilize documentary media.

Members of the DOCTalks Board of Directors will describe this capacity building approach as an emerging model for sustainable knowledge mobilization (KM) using documentary media. Dr. Scott Preston will offer a contextualization of contemporary documentary media and its role in promoting KM. Sasha Wood, will describe the DOCTalks model, our role as a knowledge broker, and various activities we have undertaken to date including collaborative meetings, workshops, and film screenings. Dr. Sue O’Donnell will present the short documentary “Men Are Bullied Too,” which was produced to disseminate the findings of her qualitative research with men who experienced workplace bullying. Dr. O’Donnell will also discuss the impact of using film as an approach to KM. While this presentation will mainly focus on Subtheme 2, and DOCTalks’ partnership-building process, we will also highlight the role of DOCTalks as a brokering network in Atlantic Canada and the role of documentary media within the wider conversation about technology and knowledge mobilization.

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Session 7: 40 Minute Workshops Presenter(s)

Abstract

Shasta CarrHarris, Stephanie Tuters, Carol Campbell, Katina Pollock

Developing a knowledge mobilization network across the public education system: Lessons learned and future approaches from Ontario’s Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER) The Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER) is the first government initiated large-scale knowledge mobilization initiative in the Ontario education system, and one of the first system projects of its kind internationally. From 2010 to 2014, the KNAER funded and supported 44 knowledge mobilization partnerships across Ontario that aimed to put research evidence to work in schools and school boards across the province. In 2014, the KNAER Secretariat reviewed KNAER’s utility, interviewed KMb experts in Canada and internationally, held planning sessions with educators and researchers, and reviewed KMb literature in order to develop recommendations for building on but adapting and evolving the KNAER to forward KMb in Ontario education over the next five years.

Our 40 minute presentation will outline KNAER’s role in advancing and sustaining a unique large-scale KMb initiative within a public system. This presentation will include an overview of KNAER’s evolving approach to system level knowledge mobilization (including the leadership, structures, processes, and technology the KNAER Secretariat has employed at different stages), key challenges with this work, and findings from our literature review, planning sessions with educators, and interviews with KMb experts that informed KNAER’s renewed approach to system-level knowledge mobilization, to be implemented over the next five years. The findings presented will be helpful to those looking to further KMb knowledge and theories, and for informing the design and execution of system models.

Audience members will be engaged in a discussion of advice on KMb approaches for the future development of KNAER thematic networks and communities of practices, including opportunities to engage with the wider KMb, education, and public policy communities.

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Travis Sztainert

Assessing Research for KTE Readiness: A Tool for End-of-Grant KTE In this presentation and discussion, I will outline a newly created tool to help individuals interested in KTE (e.g., researchers, knowledge brokers, etc.) assess created research for KTE potential (i.e., conduct end-of-grant KT). Not all knowledge is born equal - it exists on a continuum of readiness for use. Thus, even though knowledge may exist to address an identified problem, it may not be ready for use. The purpose of this tool is to help you determine how ‘ready’ your knowledge might be, and the corresponding KTE activities that may be relevant. This tool is designed for end-of-grant KT activities. That is to say, some research has been conducted (either by you or an outside source), and now you want to know what you can/should do with that knowledge. The tool consists of two major sections: (1) an assessment of the quality and strength of the evidence supporting the knowledge and (b) an assessment of the significance of the knowledge to stakeholders and end-users.

Each section is scored, based on criteria, and the final score is used to help guide decisions about KT activities based on four broad categories of ‘readiness’.

Nandini Saxena, Tamar Meyer, Jason Guriel

A Knowledge Exchange Structure in Support of System Impact The Evidence Exchange Network (EENet) is a knowledge exchange network with a mandate to work towards a more evidence-informed mental health and substance use system.

Situated within the Provincial System Support Program (PSSP) at CAMH, whose goal is to move evidence into action, EENet provides a network structure for a range of KE initiatives on different priority areas, including, for example, mental health promotion, substance misuse prevention and treatment, early psychosis intervention, and housing and justice.

A team of EENet Knowledge Brokers located across Ontario connect people with people and people with evidence. EENet Knowledge Brokers in Toronto focus their work largely on knowledge synthesis and translation, while others, working as part of multi-disciplinary Regional Implementation Teams, collaborate with local communities to implement evidenceinformed interventions that address local system gaps using an Implementation Science approach.

Knowledge Brokers use various methods at different stages of the knowledge-to-action cycle, which include: • Brokering connections across diverse stakeholders,

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• Building partnerships and networks, • Developing rapid reviews in response to stakeholder evidence questions, • Bringing stakeholders together on topics of interest to cocreate and share knowledge, • Facilitating system-level conversations on topics of relevance, • Supporting local communities to implement contextualized evidence into action, • Sharing practice-based and other forms of evidence to support scale and spread, and • Using common evaluation approaches to better understand impact.

This presentation will highlight some of the opportunities and challenges for the EENet knowledge exchange structure at PSSP and ways we work towards system impact.

Ushnish Sengupta

Entrepreneurship Education and Urban Indigenous Youth The possibilities of entrepreneurship as a potential solution to the socio-economic issues faced by Indigenous communities in Canada have been receiving increasing interest as part of public policy and private investment. At the same time, the implementation of entrepreneurship programs in Indigenous communities, and incorporation of Indigenous knowledge in entrepreneurship education has proven to be difficult. This paper provides a case study of successful implementation of University and community based entrepreneurship education in the form of workshops delivered as part of a program for Urban Indigenous Youth. The key success factors for the workshops were two-way interactions of knowledge mobilization, between University and community, adults and youth, between two universities, and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge. The lessons learned from each workshop were iteratively applied to improving the next workshop, and each workshop included different content from scenario planning to business modeling. The lessons learned from the workshops by the facilitators included divergence of interests by racial background in the same city, and the convergence of place and culture based interests across different cities. The paper identifies the need to broaden knowledge mobilization as a two way process rather than a unidirectional process. Successful knowledge mobilization in this case required in person background research, changing format of content of workshop to suit the audience, and necessary flexibility during delivery to ensure a two-way learning process between facilitator and participant.

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Rachel A. Caplan, Geoffrey Nelson, Eric Macnaughton, Tim MacLeod, Paula Goering, Myra Piat

The Sustainability of the At Home/Chez Soi Housing First Programs in Canada This research examined the sustainability of the At Home/Chez Soi Housing First (HF) programs in five Canadian cities three years after the end of the demonstration phase of the project. The following questions were addressed: (1) What changes occurred in the federal policy and funding context for HF, and what were the critical influences on policy changes?; (2) For the five At Home/Chez Soi sites, to what extent were the programs sustained with fidelity to the HF model?; (3) What do stakeholders at the sites view as the critical influences on these sustainability outcomes?; and (4) What adaptations have been made to the HF programs and what factors have contributed to the implementation of these adaptations?

To answer these questions, qualitative interviews were conducted with national-­­level key informants (n=16), site-­­level key informants (n=53), clinical teams and program participants (n=11 focus groups), and self-­­report fidelity data were collected on 9 continuing HF programs.

Changes in federal policy included a renewal of the Homelessness Partnering Strategy with a shift in emphasis to a HF approach for the 10 largest cities in Canada. These changes were influenced by the emerging evidence of the At Home/Chez Soi research and knowledge transfer and negotiation activities between the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the federal government at the level of the Prime Minister’s Office, with the support of key “go-betweens.” At the site-­­level, 9 of 13 HF programs were sustained. At 2 of the sites, 2 programs each were discontinued. This resulted from an incongruence between policy approaches in 2 of the provinces and the HF approach. In both provinces, the incongruence related to the disjunction between HF’s rent subsidy, scattered-­­site approach and the existing social housing approach. For the most part, the 9 programs continued to demonstrate a high level of fidelity to the model.

There were some adaptations for 2 of these programs in term of the program model and host organization. Factors that promoted the continuation of the programs included policy and funding, organizational support, and staff capacity. This research demonstrates the importance of ongoing knowledge transfer and negotiation activities, the confluence of different policy streams (federal and provincial), and community capacity for implementation of the HF program model.

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Kristine Newman, Dwayne Van Eerd, Ryan De Forge

Knowledge Brokering in context of Healthy Aging - What, Who, How? With supporting healthy aging in mind and to develop a better understanding of current KB practices and how KB practices evolve(d), we engaged in a scoping review, a survey study and an in-depth qualitative interviews to determine how KB is conceptualized, designed and practiced in healthcare and public health settings.

The scoping review focussed on the key elements of KB described in the literature. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with eight practicing knowledge brokers. The interviews focused on: defining knowledge brokering; practice & theory; and the current and potential applications of KB in a healthy aging context. Subsequently, online survey was conducted to solicit from a broad community of KB practitioners.

The literature search identified 248 unique references. Screening for inclusion revealed 21 documents that described 17 accounts of knowledge brokering in sufficient detail (one in aging context).

Specific KB frameworks were referenced for 10 KB approaches while the remaining seven cited general KT models.

The significance of trust, relationships, and relationship building were highlighted by interview participants. Retrieving, summarizing and making research evidence available to knowledge users were frequently cited KB activities. It was acknowledged that KB often supports seniors.

The online survey had 109 participants consent and 83 were Canadian, 19 were international and 5 did not indicate.

Respondents reported developing metrics for successful KB case by case, using evidence-based strategies, appropriate messaging and impact end-user practice changes. 44% of participants stated that their work impacts the aging population.

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Closing Remarks & Invitation to Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum 2017 The 2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum Chair Michael Johnny concluded the event by reminding participants of the previous Forums: 1) 2) 3) 4)

2012 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum – Ottawa 2013 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum – Mississauga 2014 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum – Saskatoon 2015 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum – Montréal

Each year has built on the positive momentum of each previous Forum. Focusing on the high and consistent energy of each event, Johnny expressed his appreciation for how the Forum has been respectful of all participants from a diversity of backgrounds and professional fields. The Forum has provided a safe space for knowledge mobilizers to meet and share their interests and work. Michael stated that the Forum gives everyone the time and space to ask the questions that need to be asked, including people attending for the first time. He reminded everyone of the over 280 amazing presentations and reflected on how each year Forum participants come “to listen to understand” and “act on what we learn” from previous Forums.

The 2016 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum is experimental and always tries something new He on the participants to share in evaluations of what worked well and what didn’t as a way to improve future Forums.

Johnny also reflected on the notion of care and responsibility, by feeling privileged to be this year’s Forum Chair. “It feels like being given the keys to the car…a really cool car…a really fast car!” he said. “The car was driven fast and hard and may need an oil change and some new tires, but it’s still running extremely well!

“We all took care of this Forum because we all took ownership over it,” said Johnny. He thanked the participants for investing their time and energy over the course of the forum to meet and engage as knowledge mobilizers. He also thanked Peter Levesque for his “pedagogy of love” that he brings to the Forum each and every year.

Johnny concluded the Forum as he began it by paying respect to and speaking Ojibwe and paying to honour and acknowledge the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe people of the New Credit First Nation. There are no words in Ojibwe to say good-bye...only “Giga-waabamin naagaj” (See you in a while!), said Johnny.

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Come join us for future Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forums

May 17-18, 2017 Ottawa/Gatineau

Celebrating Canada’s 150th year of Confederation Canadian Museum of History & Four Points by Sheraton Gatineau, Quebec

June 2018

Calgary (current plan)

June 2019

Halifax (current plan)

June 2020

Vancouver (current plan)

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