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ENHANCED SHARING OF INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

Initiate and participate in multifaceted communication approaches

The 2008 General Practice & Primary Health Care Research Conference was held 4-6 June, at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Hobart Tasmania. The conference theme Health for All? coupled with renowned speakers attracted 354 delegates from Australia and overseas. Delegates included researchers, decision makers, policy makers, practitioners and consumers. They came to the conference to listen, share, discuss, network and socialise. The value packed program was specifically designed to cater for the diversity of delegates attending. With more than 220 speakers, workshop facilitators and poster presenters, ideas and information flowed in abundance.

The evaluation report (which received a response rate of 54% of delegates (n=191)) showed most delegates (91%) considered that the conference increased their knowledge and understanding of the scope and nature of current research, evaluation and development to a great to moderate extent. In addition, most delegates (92%) indicated that the conference was a good to excellent forum for networking and 85% indicated that networking at the conference was important to them to a great to moderate extent.

This conference is probably the best of all those I’ve attended at facilitating networking already – thank you!
- Conference Evaluation

Planning began in November 2008 for the 2009 GP & PHC Research Conference which will be held in Melbourne, 15-17 July with the theme Driving Change.

Provide feedback to providers of data

To contribute to improving their outcomes and performance, PHC RIS again provided individual feedback to each Division about their responses to the Annual Survey early in the year. The feedback contained a selection of Division responses to the ASD, along with aggregated responses in six comparison categories to facilitate benchmarking with appropriate Divisions. The information enables them to compare their responses with those of all Divisions in Australia, and with those in the same state, RRMA (Rural Remote Metro Area), and population categories (including state, population size, Indigenous population and more). PHC RIS also prepared and sent reports to AGPN and SBOs aggregated from the response of Divisions to questions about these organisations, and made Divisions data available in many formats through the suite of on-line tools.

Conduct applied research

The second stage of the Primary Health Care Research Impact Project was completed during 2008. The objectives of this project were to:

1. find out what difference primary health care research makes to policy and practice
2. explore the pathways by which these projects have impacted on their environment
3. analyse the extent to which these pathways are consistent with existing theoretical models explaining the movement of research into policy and/or practice
4. make recommendations on how these pathways may be enhanced.

The study resulted in a greater understanding of the ways to enhance the sharing of information and knowledge, and a greater understanding of the processes by which a research project impacts on its environment and the complexities involved in assessing this. The projects studied showed there is no direct pathway between a project and an impact. The whole environment in which a project is undertaken can influence its conception, progress and uptake. The findings reinforce the importance of collaborative ways of working and of gathering the input of policy makers, health service managers, practitioners and consumers in designing, conducting and applying the research. An on-line tool to assess research impact is now in preparation based on the findings of Stage 1 & 2 of the project.