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Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design

BACKGROUND: Contemporary research should increasingly be carried out in the context of application. Nowotny called this new form of knowledge production Mode-2. In line with Mode-2 knowledge production, the Dutch government in 2006 initiated the so-called Academic Collaborative Centres (ACC) for Pub...

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Autores principales: Jansen, Maria WJ, van Oers, Hans AM, Middelweerd, Mizzi DR, van de Goor, Ien AM, Ruwaard, Dirk
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546140/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26293332
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12961-015-0026-7
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author Jansen, Maria WJ
van Oers, Hans AM
Middelweerd, Mizzi DR
van de Goor, Ien AM
Ruwaard, Dirk
author_facet Jansen, Maria WJ
van Oers, Hans AM
Middelweerd, Mizzi DR
van de Goor, Ien AM
Ruwaard, Dirk
author_sort Jansen, Maria WJ
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Contemporary research should increasingly be carried out in the context of application. Nowotny called this new form of knowledge production Mode-2. In line with Mode-2 knowledge production, the Dutch government in 2006 initiated the so-called Academic Collaborative Centres (ACC) for Public Health. The aim of these ACCs is to build a regional, sustainable knowledge-sharing network to deliver socially robust knowledge. The present study aims to highlight the enabling and constraining push and pull factors of these ACCs in order to assess whether the ACCs are able to build and strengthen a sustainable integrated organizational network between public health policy, practice, and research. METHODS: Our empirical analysis builds on a mixed methods design. Quantitative data was derived from records of a survey sent to all 11 ACCs about personnel investments, number and nature of projects, and earning power. Qualitative data was derived from 21 in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and manually coded as favourable or unfavourable pull or push factors. RESULTS: The extra funding appeared to be the most enabling push factor. The networks secured external grants for about 150 short- and long-term Mode-2 knowledge production projects in the past years. Enabling pull factors improved, especially the number of policy-driven short-term research projects. Exchange agents were able to constructively deal with the constraining push factors, like university’s publication pressure and budget limitations. However, the constraining pull factors like local government’s involvement and their low demand for scientific evidence were difficult to overcome. CONCLUSIONS: A clear improvement of the organizational networks was noticed whereby the ACC’s were pushed rather than pulled. Efforts are needed to increase the demand for scientific and socially robust evidence from policymakers and to resolve the regime differences between the research and policy systems, in order to make the bidirectionality of the links sustainable.
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spelling pubmed-45461402015-08-23 Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design Jansen, Maria WJ van Oers, Hans AM Middelweerd, Mizzi DR van de Goor, Ien AM Ruwaard, Dirk Health Res Policy Syst Research BACKGROUND: Contemporary research should increasingly be carried out in the context of application. Nowotny called this new form of knowledge production Mode-2. In line with Mode-2 knowledge production, the Dutch government in 2006 initiated the so-called Academic Collaborative Centres (ACC) for Public Health. The aim of these ACCs is to build a regional, sustainable knowledge-sharing network to deliver socially robust knowledge. The present study aims to highlight the enabling and constraining push and pull factors of these ACCs in order to assess whether the ACCs are able to build and strengthen a sustainable integrated organizational network between public health policy, practice, and research. METHODS: Our empirical analysis builds on a mixed methods design. Quantitative data was derived from records of a survey sent to all 11 ACCs about personnel investments, number and nature of projects, and earning power. Qualitative data was derived from 21 in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and manually coded as favourable or unfavourable pull or push factors. RESULTS: The extra funding appeared to be the most enabling push factor. The networks secured external grants for about 150 short- and long-term Mode-2 knowledge production projects in the past years. Enabling pull factors improved, especially the number of policy-driven short-term research projects. Exchange agents were able to constructively deal with the constraining push factors, like university’s publication pressure and budget limitations. However, the constraining pull factors like local government’s involvement and their low demand for scientific evidence were difficult to overcome. CONCLUSIONS: A clear improvement of the organizational networks was noticed whereby the ACC’s were pushed rather than pulled. Efforts are needed to increase the demand for scientific and socially robust evidence from policymakers and to resolve the regime differences between the research and policy systems, in order to make the bidirectionality of the links sustainable. BioMed Central 2015-08-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4546140/ /pubmed/26293332 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12961-015-0026-7 Text en © Jansen et al. 2015 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Jansen, Maria WJ
van Oers, Hans AM
Middelweerd, Mizzi DR
van de Goor, Ien AM
Ruwaard, Dirk
Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design
title Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design
title_full Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design
title_fullStr Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design
title_full_unstemmed Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design
title_short Conditions for sustainability of Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health in the Netherlands: a mixed methods design
title_sort conditions for sustainability of academic collaborative centres for public health in the netherlands: a mixed methods design
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546140/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26293332
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12961-015-0026-7
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