Unpacking the Black Box of Successful Research-Practice-Policy Partnerships: How to Achieve Public Health Impact Across Public Systems

A primary goal of public health and prevention science is to translate research into action to improve population health. However, bridging the gap between research evidence production and public impact has proved persistently difficult. Misalignment between academic and community or public sector values, poorly aligned timelines, and other translational issues contribute to the problem. More collaboration among researchers, community, providers, and policymakers is frequently recommended as a potential solution. Recently, several models and frameworks have emerged to identify and guide the structures and processes found in research-practice-policy (RPP) partnerships which are long-term, mutually beneficial relationships between researchers and public sectors. These frameworks have helped clarify key components found to assist increase the use of research evidence policy and practice. To date, much of the conceptual work has drawn from one system (e.g., education). Because public health and prevention are housed within and across multiple public systems, it is important to understand how these partnerships work across diverse sectors. This will assist the field in identifying which components can be replicated to achieve broadly distributed outcomes.

The goal of this research topic is to move beyond mere descriptions of successful RPP partnerships within specific sectors by requesting studies that use methods across case studies or within single efforts that can illuminate the relationship between components of these partnerships and research evidence uptake. We are also interested in critical reviews or theoretical papers to synthesize existing literature and point toward future research direction. The aim is to create generalizable knowledge about the key elements that enable their success. Previous RPP partnership research has clearly identified a set of common characteristics of effective partnerships, including trusting relationships, mutual benefits to all partners, strong and equitable organizational systems, and commitment to the partnership. However, many important questions remain about how these characteristics develop, interact with one another, operate across systems, and facilitate other key processes that lead to sustainable outcomes. To answer such questions, diverse and innovative research designs and methods engaging interdisciplinary teams are needed. Therefore, this research topic also seeks studies that use a wide array of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches. Articles focused on the development and testing of innovative measurement and analytic approaches well suited to studying RPPs (including theoretical articles) are also encouraged.

We welcome theoretical and empirical papers related to:
● Use of RPP partnerships within and across public systems
● Features of and enabling contexts for effective RPP partnerships
● Impact of RPP partnerships on health outcomes
● Mechanisms that explain how features of RPP partnerships lead to successful outcomes, including the degree to which these hold across multiple public systems
● Development and evaluation of interventions designed to enhance the use of research evidence via RPP partnerships
● Power and equity issues within RPP partnerships
● Critiques of existing research on RPP partnerships and suggestions for how to improve the RPP research agenda