Promoting knowledge translation: An ecosystem approach to evidence in health

Abstract

The dissemination and implementation of evidence in health contexts have been a concern of several international organizations responsible for recommending actions to health policymakers. World Health Organization has been advocating for an ecosystem of evidence to improve clinical practice and health professional education. Thus, in this article, we address the challenges to developing the evidence ecosystem from the point of view of health professional education, considering the contexts of practice and teaching, focused on knowledge translation. There are three pivotal challenges: producing qualified knowledge; adequate communication of the synthesized evidence; and institutional policy to sustain the implemented evidence in continuous and updated flow. The evidence ecosystem helps to understand these flows between the production and implementation of knowledge, based on the capacity and resources of different health systems. It needs to be developed in the field of health professional education, feedback in the contexts of practice and teaching, to contribute to third-generation knowledge being used by different users of health services.

Keywords

• Evidence-based practice
• Translational science
• Biomedical
• Health Personnel
• Health knowledge
• Attitudes