Academic incentives for enhancing faculty engagement with decision-makers—considerations and recommendations from one School of Public Health

Abstract: In academia, faculty are bound by three pillars of scholarship: Teaching, Research and Service. Academic promotion and tenure depend on metrics of assessment for these three pillars. However, what is and is not acceptable as “service” is often nebulous and left to the discretion of internal committees. With evolving requirements by funders to demonstrate wider impacts of research, we were keen to understand the financial and non-financial incentives for academic faculty to engage in knowledge translation and research utilization. Between November 2017–February 2018, 52 faculty from one School of Public Health (SPH) were interviewed. Data was analyzed using Atlas.Ti and furthermore with framework analysis. The appeal of incentives varied according to personal values, previous experiences, relevance of research to decision-making, individual capacities, and comfort ranging from instinctive support to reflexive resistance. Discussions around types of incentives elicited a plethora of ideas within 4 different categories: (a) Monetary Support, (b) Professional Recognition, (c) Academic Promotion, and (d) Capacity Enhancement. However, concerns included adverse incentives, disadvantaging suboptimally-equipped faculty, risk of existing efforts going unnoticed, vaguely defined evaluation metrics, and the impacts on promotion given that engagement activities often occur outside of the traditional grant cycle. With a shift in funder requests to demonstrate greater social return on their research investments, as well as renewed global attention to research, science and evidence for decision making, SPHs such as this one, are likely going to be concerned about the implications of an enhanced “service” pillar on the other two pillars: teaching and research. The role of incentives in enhancing academic engagement with policy and practice is therefore neither simple nor universally ideal. A tempered approach that considers the various professional aspirations of faculty, the capacities required, organisational culture of values around specific discovery sciences, funder conditions, as well as alignment with the institution’s mission is critical. Deliberations on incentives leads to a larger debate on how to we shift the culture of academia beyond incentives for individuals who are engagement-inclined to institutions that are engagementready, without imposing on or penalizing faculty who are choice-disengaged

Exploring the evolution of engagement between academic public health researchers and decision-makers : from initiation to dissolution

CITATION: Jessani, N. S., et al. 2018. Exploring the evolution of engagement between academic public health researchers and decision-makers : from initiation to dissolution. Health Research Policy and Systems, 18:15, doi:10.1186/s12961-019-0516-0.The original publication is available at https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.comContext: Relationships between researchers and decision-makers have demonstrated positive potential to influence research, policy and practice. Over time, interest in better understanding the relationships between the two parties has grown as demonstrated by a plethora of studies globally. However, what remains elusive is the evolution of these vital relationships and what can be learned from them with respect to advancing evidence-informed decisionmaking. We therefore explored the nuances around the initiation, maintenance and dissolution of academic–government relationships. Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with 52 faculty at one school of public health and 24 government decisionmakers at city, state, federal and global levels. Interviews were transcribed and coded deductively and inductively using Atlas.Ti. Responses across codes and respondents were extracted into an Excel matrix and compared in order to identify key themes. Findings: Eight key drivers to engagement were identified, namely (1) decision-maker research needs, (2) learning, (3) access to resources, (4) student opportunities, (5) capacity strengthening, (6) strategic positioning, (7) institutional conditionalities, and (8) funder conditionalities. There were several elements that enabled initiation of relationships, including the role of faculty members in the decision-making process, individual attributes and reputation, institutional reputation, social capital, and the role of funders. Maintenance of partnerships was dependent on factors such as synergistic collaboration (i.e. both benefit), mutual trust, contractual issues and funding. Dissolution of relationships resulted from champions changing/leaving positions, engagement in transactional relationships, or limited mutual trust and respect. Conclusions: As universities and government agencies establish relationships and utilise opportunities to share ideas, envision change together, and leverage their collaborations to use evidence to inform decision-making, a new modus operandi becomes possible. Embracing the individual, institutional, networked and systems dynamics of relationships can lead to new practices, alternate approaches and transformative change. Government agencies, schools of public health and higher education institutions more broadly, should pay deliberate attention to identifying and managing the various drivers, enablers and disablers for relationship initiation and resilience in order to promote more evidence-informed decision-making.https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12961-019-0516-0Publisher's versio