Class Held In Person

Key questions:

What is the Big Need to which the course responds? (Spoiler! There are big health changes required socially, environmentally and in medicine. There is often a lot of research evidence, but we have a leaky pipeline when it comes to moving evidence into action).

What is KT, according to the mainstream Pop Health literature?

What are common anxieties about KT found in the population & public health literature?

Agenda for Week 1

- Overview of course theme and learning objectives
- Review syllabus
- Preparing for next week: Think like a marketer: Reject the assumption that evidence is the primary factor shaping behaviour, organizational practice or public policy.
- Sign up for small group case studies, which will shape Assignments 1 and 2.

Week 1 Slides

Readings for week 1

Kershaw, Paul and Verena Rossa-Roccor. 2024. Overcoming Common Anxieties in Knowledge Translation: Advice for Scholarly Issue AdvocatesLinks to an external site.. Milbank Quarterly, 102 (2): 383 to 397. Please read carefully

Graham, Ian D, et al. 2006. "Lost in Knowledge Translation: Time for a Map?" The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions 26 (1):13-24. Please Skim

Yuval Noah Harari. 2024. Nexus: a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI. New York: Random House, chapter 1 "What is information?" Search specifically for his discussion of the "naive view" of information. Feel free to prepare by asking Chat GPT to provide a summary of chapter 1 with this focus.

Rossa-Roccor, Verena. 2025. Academics as activists: exploring and building political knowledge mobilization capacities to influence climate policy. University of BC Doctoral dissertation: https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/stream/pdf/24/1.0448920/4. The summary of various theories of policy making on pages 24-30 can be used as reference material. Dr. Rossa-Roccor will refer to these theories in class.

Reference Material (not assigned reading)

Green, L. W., et al. (2009). "Diffusion Theory and Knowledge Dissemination Utilization, and Integration in Public Health." Annual Review of Public Health 30: 151–174. See this article, in particular, for (a) the stat about KT's leaky pipeline suggesting it can often takes 17 years to move evidence into action; and (b) the focus on KT actors as connectors, mavens and salespeople.

Contandriopoulos, D., et al. (2010). "Knowledge Exchange Processes in Organizations and Policy Arenas: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Literature." The Milbank Quarterly 88(4): 444-483. See this article, in particular, for (a) its emphasis on Pierre Bourdieu's idea of habitus, which anticipates the "elephant and rider" metaphor from Haidt on which we focus in week 2; (b) its emphasis on power, lobbying, political science, etc.; and (c) its emphasis on the value of creating a Field Guide by which to decode the context in which you are performing KT in order to develop a strong KT strategy. The latter drives the design of this course, which is organized to equip students with key tools for a Field Guide for future K2A planning.