Health research policy and systems / BioMed Central
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Health Res Policy Syst · Apr 2020
Stakeholders' engagement in co-producing policy-relevant knowledge to facilitate employment for persons with developmental disabilities.
Persons with developmental disabilities (PWDD) face a number of individual, environmental and societal barriers when seeking employment. Integrated knowledge translation (IKT) involves ongoing and dynamic interactions between researchers and stakeholders for the purpose of engaging in mutually beneficial research to address these types of multi-faceted barriers. There is a knowledge gap in the IKT literature on effective stakeholder engagement strategies outside of the dissemination stage to inform policy. In this paper, we report on a number of engagement strategies employed over a 2-year period to engage a wide range of stakeholders in different stages of an IKT project that aimed to investigate the 'wicked' problem of employment for PWDD. ⋯ In addition to providing guidance on how to implement adaptable meaningful engagement strategies, these findings contribute to discussions on how IKT projects are planned and funded. More studies to explore effective mechanisms for engaging a wide range of stakeholders in IKT research are needed. More evidence of successful engagement strategies employed by researchers to achieve meaningful knowledge co-production is also key to advancing the discipline.