Partner or perish: experiences from the field about collaborations for reform.
Collaborations between researchers, policy makers, service providers and community members are critical to the journey of health service reform. Challenges are multifaceted and complex. Partners come with a variety of challenging agendas, value sets and imperatives, and see the drivers for reform from different perspectives. Different skills are required for managing the partnership and for providing academic leadership, and different structural frameworks need to be put in place for each task in each project. We have found through a series of partnerships across our research theme of healthy ageing, and consequent translation into policy and practice, that significant and innovative effort is required for both the collaboration and the research to succeed. A shared understanding of the issues and challenges is a start, but not sufficient for longer-term success. In addition to managing the research, our experience has demonstrated the need to understand the different challenges faced by each of the partners, recognise and respect personal and organisational value systems, and to establish separate mechanisms to manage strong egos alongside, but outside of, the research process.
Department of Rural Health, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 103, Hobart, Tas. 7001, Australia. kim.boyer@utas.edu.au
Kim
K
Boyer
Peter
P
Orpin
Judith
J
Walker
D019058:Community Networks / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D003256:Community Participation; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006282:Health Personnel; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D011050:Policy Making; D012108:Research Personnel; D013648:Tasmania