Bridging the gap between research, policy, and practice: Lessons learned from academic-public partnerships in the CTSA network.

A primary barrier to translation of clinical research discoveries into care delivery and population health is the lack of sustainable infrastructure bringing researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and communities together to reduce silos in knowledge and action. As National Institutes of Health's (NIH) mechanism to advance translational research, Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) awardees are uniquely positioned to bridge this gap. Delivering on this promise requires sustained collaboration and alignment between research institutions and public health and healthcare programs and services. We describe the collaboration of seven CTSA hubs with city, county, and state healthcare and public health organizations striving to realize this vision together. Partnership representatives convened monthly to identify key components, common and unique themes, and barriers in academic-public collaborations. All partnerships aligned the activities of the CTSA programs with the needs of the city/county/state partners, by sharing resources, responding to real-time policy questions and training needs, promoting best practices, and advancing community-engaged research, and dissemination and implementation science to narrow the knowledge-to-practice gap. Barriers included competing priorities, differing timelines, bureaucratic hurdles, and unstable funding. Academic-public health/health system partnerships represent a unique and underutilized model with potential to enhance community and population health.

Reflections on Government Service Rotations by an Academic Health Education Professional.

This reflection is on a health education professional's rotation from professor in a school of public health to a government position and back parallels that of Professor Howard Koh's journey to Assistant Secretary of Health, one level higher in the same federal bureaucracy. We both acknowledge the steep learning curve and some bureaucratic hassles and mazes that can attend government service, but similarly conclude that ". . . it was worth it." In this personalized case, I weigh some of the specific learning experiences and challenges I faced while in the government against the needs of the field of health promotion for more such revolving-door experiences among academic public health professionals. From my argument that to get more evidence-based practice we need more practice-based evidence, I conclude that more experience in practice among those returning to academia will render their teaching and research more relevant to the needs for evidence in policy and practice.