Using Research to Improve Children’s Health Care
Although Canada is among the world’s most prosperous nations, health outcomes for Canadian children are surprisingly poor compared to those in other developed nations. These poor outcomes are partly due to a failure to use the best available research.
Dr. Shannon Scott, Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Translation in Children’s Health, hopes to overcome this failure by developing and evaluating strategies that ensure the best available research is placed in the hands of those who influence children’s health—parents, families, health-care professionals, and decision-makers.
While health systems and health-care professionals readily embrace technological innovation, they often strongly resist changes in practice that could narrow the gap between research and practice. Furthermore, ensuring that families have meaningful involvement in their children’s health care requires that they have access to understandable and easily available research. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.
Scott aims to make it easier to understand how research on children is used or ignored, and to understand the factors that shape its use. Scott is also developing strategies to ensure that the best available research on children is consistently in the hands of all players.
Scott’s research will be crucial to the health of Canadian children.