Knowledge mobilisation and capacity building (KM/CB)
As well as commissioning new research, the SDO programme is interested in stimulating knowledge mobilisation - the interactive exchange of research-based findings and ideas between researchers and managers - and capacity building - the ability to access and use management research within the NHS.
By monitoring and evaluating the programme's knowledge mobilisation activities, we ensure that research evidence the programme produces is useful and accessible to a range of audiences, including NHS managers and leaders, clinical professionals, and patients and the public.
Strategies to support KM/CB can be thought of as encompassing a wide range of activities: those that ‘push' research towards practitioners; those that create ‘pull' from practitioners for research; and those that build links and work at the interface between the two communities (‘intermediation', sometimes called ‘linkage and exchange'). The portfolio of activities planned (developed through discussions of the Working Group and more widely) encompasses this full range, with a particular emphasis on interactive linkage and exchange.
As part of this work, the SDO programme has funded the SDO Network, hosted by the NHS Confederation. The SDO Network facilitates knowledge mobilisation and capacity building (KM/CB) by organising various interactive events, developing local learning sets, facilitating placements and acting as a knowledge broker. More information on the SDO Network and the events it helps to organise can be found on here
As well as working with and through the SDO Network, the SDO KM/CB initiative is promoted by the development of the SDO Management Fellowship Scheme. This new scheme offers successful SDO research teams the opportunity to apply for additional funds to allow a local manager to form an integral part of their research team.
In 2009 the NIHR SDO programme commissioned a group of ten projects specifically to look at research utilisation and knowledge mobilisation by healthcare managers, details and links to these projects are provided below:
