Building bridges between research and policy: lessons from the ESRC policy fellowship programme

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Jessica Benson-Egglenton and Matthew Flinders

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Understanding the dynamics of research policy fellowships: an evaluative analysis of impacts and ecosystem effects’.

An early evaluation of a major UK policy fellowship programme reveals both promising impacts and significant challenges in bridging the research-policy divide.

This blog post is based on research evaluating the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Policy Fellows scheme (2021-2023).

In 2021, the ESRC invested £2.5 million in placing 24 academic researchers within government departments for up to 18 months. This ‘Research to Policy’ (R2P) fellowship programme aimed to inject research expertise directly into policymaking while helping academics better understand how government works. Our evaluation of this pilot programme reveals three key findings.

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Designing the CITE framework: integrating traditional knowledge in contemporary health

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Amie Steel and Hope Foley

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Designing the Contemporary Implementation of Traditional knowledge and Evidence (CITE) framework to guide the application of traditional knowledge in contemporary health contexts: a Delphi study’.

The Contemporary Implementation of Traditional Knowledge and Evidence (CITE) framework is a groundbreaking guide designed to integrate traditional medicine (TM) with modern healthcare systems. Developed through expert consensus, with the results published in Evidence & Policy, this framework provides essential principles and criteria for evaluating and applying traditional knowledge in clinical practice, research, education and policy. As global health initiatives and institutions increasingly recognise the value of Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Healthcare (TCIH), the CITE Framework offers a timely, practical solution for ensuring the quality, safety, and efficacy of these practices in contemporary health contexts.

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Evidence & Policy Call for Associate Editors

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The Editorial Management Board of the journal Evidence & Policy invites applications for Associate Editors. Evidence & Policy is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between research evidence and the concerns of policy makers and practitioners, as well as researchers.

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The empathy puzzle: why do some of us excel at learning empathy?

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Atefeh Galehdarifard, Mojgan Khademi, Mohammad Gholami, Moloud Radfar, Farzad Ebrahimzadeh and Mohammad-Hasan Imani-Nasab

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘The impact of knowledge brokering on nurses’ empathy with patients receiving cardiac care: an experimental study’.

Empathy is a fundamental concept in the development of human relationships. Whether individuals have a natural inclination toward empathy or have cultivated it through education and upbringing, this background can significantly influence the effectiveness of interventions designed to promote empathetic behaviour. Our research suggests that individuals with higher levels of empathy are often more motivated to enact change, actively promote empathy, and show a greater willingness to learn and adopt empathetic behaviours in practice.

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Functional dialogues: guiding vaccination policy during COVID-19 through direct knowledge transfer

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Katie Attwell, Tauel Harper and Chris Blyth

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Facilitating knowledge transfer during Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout: an examination of ‘Functional Dialogues’ as an approach to bridge the evidence–policy gap’.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we wanted to use our skills to help with the eventual vaccine rollout. Chris was already well-placed to do so. As Chair of Australia’s Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), he had years of experience in aspects of vaccine policymaking. Katie was an emerging leader in vaccination social science and policy, and, like Chris, she had strong connections in the Western Australian Department of Health. They knew that the team focused on administering Australia’s National Immunisation Program would have their hands full with supporting the existing programme during COVID-19 times. How could they also prepare for a pandemic vaccine rollout?

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Shaping policy with climate resilience stories: Cape Town’s most affected speak for themselves

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Laurence Piper, Gillian Black, Anna Wilson, Liezl Dick and Tsitsi Mpofu-Mketwa

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Policy engagement as ‘empowered representation’: democratic mediation through a participatory research project on climate resilience’.

Policy engagement is both a condition and moral obligation of publicly funded research projects in many countries, and our case in South Africa was no different. It was just relatively difficult.

In 2019 we won a UKRI grant to do participatory research on how people living in poor settlements in Cape Town experience and respond to the climate-related hazards of water scarcity, floods and fires. The idea was to work closely with affected community members in understanding how they coped with these disasters, and what they thought could be done better in the future, by themselves and with help from others. We discussed our experiences in our recent article in Evidence and Policy, and summarise some of them here.

These community participants then presented their experiences and ideas for climate resilience as ‘best bets’ to government officials in a series of deliberative workshops.

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The forest or the trees? What we know about Covid-19 advisory bodies

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Clemence Bouchat, Sonja Blum, Ellen Fobé and Marleen Brans

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Policy advisory bodies during crises: a scoping review of the COVID-19 literature in Europe’.

The number of academic papers written about advice and policymaking increased following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. When this kind of scholarship boom happens, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. In our Evidence & Policy paper, ‘Policy advisory bodies during crises: a scoping review of the COVID-19 literature in Europe’, we clarify what actually came out of this new scholarship. We focus on the structures that formally provided policy advice to European governments during the pandemic, such as government agencies, ad hoc taskforces and research institutes.

Our review spanned 981 academic outputs published between 2020 and 2023. The review protocol follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. In the end, a corpus of 59 publications informed our findings.. Our corpus was mostly composed of qualitative studies, studies about the UK and Sweden, and studies that examined the first half of 2020. We found that the academic community has mostly focused on advisory body composition, body structure and the advisory process.

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Examining evidence-integrated codesign as a program quality assurance strategy

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Sarah Walker and Larry Norman

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Codesigning youth diversion programmes with community-led organisations: a case study’.

The equitable use of social science is a persistent governance challenge, particularly in applied social science and psychosocial treatment research. A common approach in applied social science is testing learning tools such as checklists, guides, manuals and trainings. These tools are developed to support behavior change at multiple levels and can be aimed at individuals, organisations or systems. To become evidence-based, these tools are tested against a control, ‘as usual’, or equivalent group. If effective in comparison, the package is then purveyed with the coveted ‘evidence-based’ moniker. Governments eager for tested approaches, as part of responsible governance, are then motivated to buy these tools and they are typically delivered by purveyor organisations as completed packages.

Some previous efforts focused on addressing both evidence-informed and community-engaged values have resorted to ‘list selection’ approaches in which community is involved in selecting a package from a pre-assembled list of programs. This approach engages community choice but limits the opportunity for community to contribute to more substantive design in the framing and content of these programs.

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Policy to research policy fellowship programmes: forging connections and knowledge exchange between policymakers and researchers

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Nicola Buckley and Kathryn Oliver

This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Evaluating Policy to Research Fellowship programmes’.

Policy to Research (P2R) Fellowship programmeshave been found toforge connections and relationships between policymakers and researchers in academia and beyond, develop skills and knowledge among policymakers and researchers and can develop collaborative projects.

In our Evidence and Policy paper, we found 24 P2R Policy Fellowship programmes to study, from the UK, Europe and North America. The cost of providing these fellowships was estimated at around £5,000 per Policy Fellow, which is comparable to, or in some cases less than other methods for academic-policy engagement (e.g. workshops, training, Research to Policy Fellowships, funding research collaborations). More evaluations are needed to understand the role these Fellowships can play in developing the evidence-for-policy system.

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