Assignment 4

Objective: Synthesize course materials and experiences to provide your future self with effective guidance for designing and initiating a high quality KT strategy.

Assignment: A maximum 25 page (double-spaced) Knowledge to Action Field Guide that critically reviews Assignment 1, Assignment 2 and Assignment 3 to reveal insights for the design of future KT plans that you can apply to your own research or professional work.  (35% of final grade due December 10, 2018).

This is an individual assignment.  Please submit to paul.kershaw@ubc.ca. Use the subject "SPPH 581n 2018 Assignment 4."

Instructions

Design a Field Guide to provide you with advice to follow in the future when developing KT plans for a project.  What steps should your planning follow?

In keeping with the final seminar, use this guidebook as an opportunity to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the mainstream Population Health KT articles assigned in class.  Strong assignments will engage with the five anxieties in the Pop Health KT literature that have motivated the course, along with practical strategies to address these anxieties recommended by literatures that help us to think about power, social movements and marketing.

Throughout the course, the course case study, your own case study and those of other small groups have given you opportunities to experiment with and reflect on a variety of strategies in assignments 1, 2 and 3 to design and launch a KT strategy, while addressing anxieties/weaknesses in the Population Health KT literature.  Reflect on your experience with those tactics, noting what you would do again; and what you wouldn’t do.  In both cases, justify why.

Be specific.  For example, if the literature is concerned that the science of KT is not generating evidence of “what works” regardless of the context, then document this concern in the literature with reference to articles assigned in class.  Then account for what a KT field guide can and cannot do for someone planning a KT campaign. 

If there is concern that much of the KT literature in Pop Health presumes an inaccurate understanding of the place of evidence in individual or group judgments, document this concern in the literature with reference to articles assigned in the class.  Then provide concrete strategies to address the concern.

If much of the KT literature in Pop Health includes limited attention to power dynamics, then what are practical strategies to map the players and who has the power in any given context? 

If much of the KT literature implies theories of change that rely primarily on “putting the evidence out there,” what are practical strategies to generate alternate theories of change that are more comprehensive and/or more attuned to the context? 

If KT requires sustained commitments of time, more than may have been anticipated by those presuming theories of change that simply emphasize “putting the evidence out there,” then what are your thoughts about the roles and responsibilities of academics and public health professionals in the knowledge mobilization process? 

Be charitable in your read of the mainstream Population Health KT literature.  Throughout your guidebook, make note of what you find compelling in this literature, and how that will guide you to think about KT in the future.  Show the same charity when reflecting on the complementary literatures designed to help us plan our KT by drawing on the insights of experts in power, social movements and marketing.

In sum, given the above guidelines, students will be evaluated according to their ability to:

• provide an account of the "steps" you would take to design and launch a KT strategy in the future.
• reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the mainstream Population Health KT articles assigned in class.
• reflect on your experience engaging with assignments 1, 2 and 3 to address those weaknesses, noting what you would do again; and what you wouldn’t do. In both cases, justify why.
• see also the general rubric provided in the Approach to Evaluation.

This assignment invites students to practice performing the following ASPPH prescribed core MPH competencies: