Assessing communities of practice in health policy: a conceptual framework as a first step towards empirical research

Health Research Policy and Systems

Sophie Witter⁷  Isidore Sieleunou³  Valéry Ridde⁴  Jérôme Pfaffmann²  Isabelle Lange⁵  Yamba Kafando⁶  Allison Kelley³  David Hercot³  Guy Clarysse²  Bruno Meessen³  Maria Paola Bertone¹ 

[1] Department of Public Health, Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), Nationalestraat 155, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium;UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office (WCARO)BP 29720, Dakar-Yoff, Senegal;Facilitator of one of the Harmonization for Health in Africa Communities of Practice;Research Centre of the University of Montreal Hospital Centre (CRCHUM)Tour Saint-Antoine, 850 rue Saint-Denis, Montréal H2X 0A9, Canada;Maternal and Neonatal Health Group, Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, UK;Département de Santé Publique et de Biologie Médicale, Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (IRSS)03 BP 7192, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso;FEMHealth project coordinator, Immpact, University of Aberdeen, 2nd Floor, Health Sciences Building, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, UK

关键词: Knowledge translation;    Knowledge management;    Health policy;    Evaluation;    Communities of practice;   

Others  :  805110
DOI  :  10.1186/1478-4505-11-39

 received in 2013-01-21, accepted in 2013-10-03,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of people that interact regularly to deepen their knowledge on a specific topic. Thanks to information and communication technologies, CoPs can involve experts distributed across countries and adopt a ‘transnational’ membership. This has allowed the strategy to be applied to domains of knowledge such as health policy with a global perspective. CoPs represent a potentially valuable tool for producing and sharing explicit knowledge, as well as tacit knowledge and implementation practices. They may also be effective in creating links among the different ‘knowledge holders’ contributing to health policy (e.g., researchers, policymakers, technical assistants, practitioners, etc.).

CoPs in global health are growing in number and activities. As a result, there is an increasing need to document their progress and evaluate their effectiveness. This paper represents a first step towards such empirical research as it aims to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis and assessment of transnational CoPs in health policy.

The framework is developed based on the findings of a literature review as well as on our experience, and reflects the specific features and challenges of transnational CoPs in health policy. It organizes the key elements of CoPs into a logical flow that links available resources and the capacity to mobilize them, with knowledge management activities and the expansion of knowledge, with changes in policy and practice and, ultimately, with an improvement in health outcomes. Additionally, the paper addresses the challenges in the operationalization and empirical application of the framework.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Bertone et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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