Perspectives and Experiences of Policy Makers, Researchers, Health Information Technology Professionals, and the Public on Evidence-Based Health Policies: Protocol for a Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND: Evidence-based health policy (EBHP) development is critical to the judicious use of public funds. EBHPs increase transparency, accountability, effectiveness, and efficiency of policies. Encouraging collaboration between researchers or knowledge producers and policy makers is important because both communities have distinct professional cultures, resulting in them working separately without understanding each other. Knowledge sharing is a complex process that requires understanding of cultural aspects that may reduce cultural differences and increase the use of common language. Health information technology (HIT) is a useful tool to increase knowledge translation, which may result in the transparent use of evidence and networking in developing EBHPs. Our vision is to leverage HIT tools for a better health system that includes digitalized, open source, evidence-based, and transparent ways for collaboration and development of robust mechanisms and for sharing of synthesized evidence with knowledge user-friendly forms. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to develop a conceptual framework on Knowledge translation and health Information Technology for Transparency (KhITT) in policy making and EBHPs (ie, the KhITT framework). The framework will be informed by the views of four key stakeholder groups (ie, policy makers, knowledge producers, HIT professionals, and the public) toward EBHP. The informants may also describe practices that demonstrate the EBHP development process and suggest technology platforms to enable this process. METHODS: We propose an exploratory, descriptive qualitative study to take place in British Columbia, Canada, using in-depth semistructured interviews. To ensure data saturation and trustworthiness, we will use a nonprobability, purposive snowball sample of up to 15 eligible participants in each of the four stakeholder groups. We will analyze the data using content analysis. RESULTS: The KhITT framework focuses on various stakeholders' perspectives to better understand their perceived needs and priorities in identifying issues with EBHP, in order to make informed recommendations. Ethics approval has been obtained by the harmonized Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia. We anticipate that we will complete data collection and analysis by December 2020. Preliminary results will be published in summer 2021. CONCLUSIONS: Our ultimate goal of this study is to develop a conceptual framework and describe the technology platforms that would enable the EBHP process. We anticipate that our rigorous content analysis will be able to produce insights and themes that are able to address our objectives, contribute to an in-depth understanding of the EBHP process within British Columbia, highlight all influential factors, explicitly disseminate and communicate the study results, identify issues with EBHP and provide informed recommendations to address them, and enhance efforts toward transparent EBHPs. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/16268.

Transforming Community Access Services through Client- and Family-Centred Homecare Transitions.

This article describes how one provincial health region adopted a client- and family-centred approach to improve access to community health services. Transition best practices and the "Triple Aim" supplied a framework for the transformation of transition of clients needing home healthcare services (Berwick et al. 2008). The need to improve the patient and family experience, establish and streamline professional practice standards, strengthen interprofessional collaborations, increase efficiency, create a critical mass of experts in the clinical domain of care transitions and program access, and evaluate customer experience were the organizational drivers for this transformation. The new framework identifies clients' needs and assigns a priority code. It also identifies which family member provides what support to the client and offers a one-stop service number staffed by individuals trained to provide client- and family-centred homecare services. This transformation of home healthcare transitions has improved the client and family experience, strengthened service provider satisfaction and generated efficiencies in prioritizing and delivering community healthcare services.

A system-wide innovation in transition services: transforming the home care liaison role.

This article describes how a provincial health authority in Canada improved patient care and staff satisfaction by transforming the role of home care (HC) liaison. The transformation focused on clearly defining the role, function and reporting structure, and identifying which healthcare providers could fill the liaison role. The transformation included adoption of transition best practices, leveraging an electronic referral system, creation of an interprofessional team, standardization of tools/orientation, and strong evaluation metrics, centralizing decision making, and developing a process for streaming referrals. The authors identify key success factors that made the transformation possible, as well as challenges and work that remains to sustain the change.

Community awareness of postpartum depression.

OBJECTIVE: To explore awareness of postpartum depression and its symptoms and available community resources for women with postpartum depression. DESIGN: Cross-sectional surveillance research, using population-based data. SETTING: Eight communities in southern and eastern Ontario, Canada. PARTICIPANTS: A random selection of adults 18 years of age and older with telephones. METHOD: Logistic regression and chi-square test were used to analyze awareness of postpartum depression and its symptoms, the baby blues, and sources of assistance for women with postpartum depression. RESULTS: The vast majority of respondents were aware of postpartum depression (90.1% +/- 0.6% confidence interval) (n=8,750) as compared with the baby blues (62.5% +/- 1.1%). Awareness of postpartum depression, its symptoms, the baby blues, and sources of assistance varied according to the demographic profiles of the respondents (family structure, education, and language spoken at home). CONCLUSION: Awareness of the term postpartum depression does not necessarily imply awareness of its symptoms or sources of assistance. Public education is needed to address this fact in order to provide social support and encourage treatment for symptomatic women and their families. Education should target individuals with lower levels of education and non-English-speaking groups.

Tris lipidation--a novel drug delivery system that alters biodistribution.

Tris-lipidation uses Tris to produce drug-fatty acyl conjugates. Radiolabelled Tris-fatty acyl conjugates of methotrexate (MTX) were examined in biodistribution studies in BALB/c mice. Following delivery via a variety of routes, the Tris-lipidated compounds demonstrated features in common with other colloid drug delivery systems. Tissues of the reticuloendothelial system localised the drug following intravenous administration, and the compounds showed prolongation at the site of injection into muscle or fatty tissue, subcutaneously or when inhaled. These findings indicate that the Tris-lipidation platform could be classed as an alternative colloid drug delivery system.