Regular readers of the injury prevention blog will know I have commented on a number of occasions regarding the need to (1) share our research findings, and (2) translate research into practice and policy. Whilst this is the ideal, I also realise that there are many obstacles to this being the actual, another topic upon which I have lamented. With this in mind, I was pleased to see an article summarising the efforts of researchers to improve the uptake of “Mayday Safety Procedure” by coaches to manage injury in one of Australia’s most popular sports, rugby union.
With challenges in translating research into practice in mind, the researchers note that
“the translation of injury prevention policy into community practice can be enhanced by developing and implementing a theory-informed, context-specific diffusion plan, undertaken in partnership with key stakeholders“.
The statistically significant improvements in Mayday knowledge and practice reported by the authors have bolstered my hopes that research findings can be translated into policy and practice in other safety-critical injury prevention domains.
Read more at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24566099.