Editorial: Knowledge transfer and exchange through interactive research: a new approach for supporting evidence-informed occupational health and safety (OHS) practice

• Date: 16 June 2023
• Pages: 137-144
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-06-2023-232
• Published date: 16 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Health & social care,Healthcare management,HR & organizational behaviour,Human resource policy,Employee welfare
• Author: Ulrik Gensby,Dwayne Van Eerd,Benjamin C. Amick,Hans Jørgen Limborg,Johnny Dyreborg

Editorial: Knowledge transfer

and exchange through interactive

research: a new approach for

supporting evidence-informed

occupational health and safety

(OHS) practice

Commonly used research to practice strategies

Evidence-based practice or evidence-informed decision-making is considered a vital and

practical approach to prevent workplace accidents and injuries (van Dijk et al., 2010;Van

Eerd, 2019). Despite discussions to better support evidence-informed practice in occupational

health and safety (OHS) (Baker et al., 2015; Schulte, 2017; Waterson, 2016), OHS research and

systematic reviews describing various interventions to address occupational injuries

(Dyreborg et al., 2022;Teufer et al., 2019), challenges remain in getting this research into

practice (Van Eerd, 2019). Understanding the linkage between research and practice is needed

to support evidence informed OHS policy and practices.

Supporting evidence-informed decision-making is relevant to OHS professionals in

workplaces and has implications for OHS decision-makers (Laroche and Amara, 2011;

Laroche and Patoine, 2021). Increasingly, funders are encouraging researchers to show and

explain how they share knowledge with OHS audiences to disseminate and implement

research findings into practice (Wilson et al., 2010;CIHR, 2012). The National Institutes of

Health (https://www.nih.gov/) and the Canadian Institute for Health Research (https://cihr-

irsc.gc.ca/e/193.html) support research on how evidence-based practices can be effectively

translated and used in real-world settings. Other international research institutions like the

Campbell Collaboration (https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/) and Cochrane (https://

www.cochrane.org/) support activities and methods to reach audiences using evidence

syntheses. Recently the research to practice topic has been included in The Nordic Institute

for Training in OHS (https://niva.org/) continuing education courses. However, it is unclear if

OHS research is reaching the right audiences. However, researchers tend to disseminate their

findings through academic conference proceedings and publications in peer-reviewed

journals (Wilson et al., 2010). Workplace decision-makers may not have access to up-to-date

evidence from the scientific literature when they make decisions about health and safety

approaches (Van Eerd et al., 2018;van Dijk and Caraballo-Arias, 2021).

How researchers interact and collaborate with audiences and research users to help

translate OHS knowledge to practice is not well known (Schulte, 2017; Van Eerd, 2019),

e.g. how to apply knowledge for informed decision-making and changing practices or policies

(Van Eerd et al., 2018). Differences in goals between research and practice are important

barriers to knowledge transfer between academia and industry, and thus limit knowledge

uptake and use in industry settings (de Wit-de Vries et al., 2019). Many researchers find it

difficult to facilitate knowledge sharing and develop actionable knowledge for injury

prevention because different terms and research approaches can be used (Tabak et al., 2012).

Some health services approaches focus on knowledge to action with external audiences and

research users (Graham et al., 2006) and dissemination and implementation (D&I) research

that is specifically concerned with the determinants, adoption and sustainability of

Editorial

137

InternationalJournal of Workplace

Health Management

Vol. 16 No. 2/3, 2023

pp. 137-144

© Emerald Publishing Limited

1753-8351

DOI 10.1108/IJWHM-06-2023-232

IJWHM ▪IJWHM-06-2023-232_proof ▪13 June 2023 ▪10:32 am