Rhoda Meador
When older people fall, experience chronic pain, or become socially isolated, a cascade of health problems tend to follow. Cornell University researchers have developed an innovative method, the research-to-practice consensus workshop, to bring researchers and practitioners together to share their knowledge and perspectives and to agree on research priorities, practice recommendations and how to disseminate recommendations.
The consensus workshop model was developed by researchers at the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging (CITRA), which is a part of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell. CITRA is a unique collaboration of social science, clinical research, and education, encompassing researchers from Cornell's Ithaca campus; research clinicians at the Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell in Manhattan. The CITRA approach to research involves researchers, educators, and community participants in joint decisions regarding every step of the research process. CITRA is funded by the National Institute on Aging.
“We developed this model to get evidence-based practices into the field and to put researchers and practitioners on equal footing. This helps create research that has the practice community in mind, but is still scientifically rigorous,” said Karl Pillemer, co-director of the (CITRA) and professor of human development at Cornell, who helped develop the model. “Now, CITRA can take a pressing problem for older people and ask researchers and practitioners together how to best approach it.”
So far, CITRA has sponsored six consensus workshops: The first workshop focused on falls prevention; subsequent workshops have addressed social isolation, chronic pain, elder abuse, care transitions and the application of hospitality research to aging services. In the case of the falls prevention consensus workshop, “The group agreed, for example, that the interventions most likely to be effective are group activities that include discussion, self-help, exercise and interpersonal skills training activities,” said Pillemer. “They also recommended working to strengthen naturally occurring networks among older adults living in the same neighborhood.”
"The workshops begin with a cutting-edge, non-technical summary of the scientific literature on the problem. Based on this document, several dozen selected academicians and practitioners come together to work toward a consensus. “The model provides a non-threatening environment for researcher-practitioner dialogue to take place,” said Elaine Wethington, professor of human development at Cornell. “We think that the model provides a learning opportunity for researchers to become more aware of the real-world problems practitioners face and for practitioners to become more aware of research. It also provides an environment where both groups can develop innovative ideas for intervention programs because researchers and practitioners possess valuable insights, which are often complementary.”
CITRA Research-to-Practice Consensus Workshop Model
The concept of a research-to-practice consensus workshop emerged, in the course of the CITRA partnership, from discussions of ways to bridge the gap between research and practice. The research-to-practice consensus workshop was designed to achieve several specific goals. First, it addressed the need for meaningful dialogue between researchers and practitioners. Opportunities for equal-status contact between researchers and practitioners in which serious research issues can be openly discussed are few (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003). The consensus workshop model provides a venue for such dialogue.
Second, scientists’ agendas frequently do not reflect the real-world concerns of eventual end-users of research (Stokes, 1997). A primary goal of the consensus workshop model was to identify discrepancies between interventions recommended by research and the actual experience of community-based practitioners. CITRA researchers and community partners jointly assumed that practitioners would be able to shed light on why some programs do not achieve expected results, and could provide important contextual information useful for the design of future intervention research projects.
Third, Kitson, Harvey and McCormack (1998) suggest that effective movement of research evidence into practice requires researchers’ attention to the environment in which the research is to be placed and to the method of facilitating the knowledge transfer, rather than simply assuming that the rigor of the evidence is sufficient justification for adoption. By encouraging practitioners to critique existing research and to place it in actual contexts where older persons are served, the consensus workshop aims to capture practitioner interest and to encourage discussion about the implications for practice.
To achieve the goal of facilitating meaningful dialogue between researchers and practitioners, CITRA modified an existing model popular in the scientific community. Many government agencies and scientific organizations organize “consensus conferences” or workshops (Black, Murphy, Lamping, McKee, Sanderson, Askham & Marteau, 1999; Ferguson, 1993; Goven, 2003).
The major steps involved in conducting the consensus workshop are: 1) Selecting a topic that is both an important problem and one on which there is scientific evidence; 2) Selecting a group of scientific experts on the topic; 3) Preparing a preliminary report that summarizes available research findings; 4) Convening meetings of the scientific panel involving presentations and discussion of the report; and 5) Preparing a final consensus report.
Further Resources
Visit the for complete reports from each of the consensus workshops. The website also features a downloadable manual that users can use to conduct their own consensus workshop.
References
Black, N., Murphy, M., Lamping, D., McKee M., Sanderson, C., Askham, J., Marteau, T. (1999). Consensus development methods: a review of best practice in creating clinical guidelines. Journal of Health Services Research Policy, 4, 236-48.
Ferguson JH. (1993). NIH consensus conferences: dissemination and impact. Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, 180-98; discussion 198-9.
Goven, J. (2003). Deploying the consensus conference in New Zealand: democracy and de-problematization. Public Understand. Sci. 12, 423–440.
Kitson, A., Harvey, G., & McCormack, B. (1998). Enabling the implementation of evidence based practice: a conceptual framework. Quality in Health Care, 7, 149–158.
Minkler, M., Wallerstein, N.(2003). Community-Based Participatory Research for Health. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sabir, M., Breckman, R., Meador, R., Wethington, E., Reid, M.C., & Pillemer, K. (2006). The CITRA Research-Practice Consensus-Workshop Model: Exploring a New Method of Research Translation in Aging. The Gerontologist, 46, 833-839.
Sabir, M., Wethington, E., Breckman, R., Meador, R., Reid, M.C., and Pillemer, K. (2009). A Community-Based Participatory Critique of Social Isolation Intervention Research for Community-Dwelling Older Adults. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 28, 218-234.
