Knowledge Translation (KT)? What does that mean?

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Two drawn heads filled with gears are connected by a bridge of gears in the air

Learn about Knowledge Translation in Cochrane with the launch of the KT online learning module!

Blog author Karen Head is the Cochrane Knowledge Translation Project Manager and a Cochrane author. She works to support KT projects and help share learnings about knowledge translation across Cochrane.

As someone who is more used to conducting meta-analyses and developing summary of findings tables, my first encounter with the term ‘Knowledge Translation’ was confusion! My thoughts ranged from, is it about translating Cochrane Evidence into different languages? Is it about sharing the results of Cochrane reviews? Is it about prioritising Cochrane review titles to make them relevant to end users? It turns out the answer is ‘yes’ to all of these things…and a lot more besides!

The confusion around the meaning of the term ‘knowledge translation’ was a concern shared by the Cochrane community working group looking at how we can build capacity for knowledge translation. With this, the idea for an online learning module explaining ‘KT in Cochrane’ was born!

We are delighted to launch the KT online learning module across Cochrane and for all our contributors! It is freely accessible to everyone, you just need to log in with a Cochrane account (free to register) and should take about 1 hour to complete.

Group of stakeholders sitting down and chatting

 

The module aims to explain what knowledge translation is and how it relates to many of our Cochrane activities. You will meet characters from across Cochrane and see different interactive scenarios that we hope are relatable to your Cochrane roles. Whether you are an author, someone working in a Review Group, Geographic Group, Field, a member of Cochrane Consumer Network, translation team – or any other role that you might have in Cochrane – we hope that you will enjoy the module. We hope that you will see how, by keeping the needs of end users at the heart of what we do, we can use knowledge translation to promote evidence-informed health decision-making.

Go to the full module

It has taken so many wonderful knowledge translation experts, advisors, peer reviewers and learning experts from every corner of Cochrane to help produce this module, that it is difficult to name them all – but thank you! However, a huge special thanks should be given to Sarah Elliott (Cochrane Child Health) and Jess Hendon (Cochrane Common Mental Disorders) for their content expertise on the module, along with Dario Sambunjuak and Chris Watts from Cochrane’s Training team. This was the small group who met many months ago (when meeting in-person was allowed!) and provided the inspiration for the module. They have shown throughout the development of the module the collaboration, enthusiasm, sense of humour and above all, passion that makes working in Cochrane such a pleasure.

We hope that you enjoy the module and we are happy to hear any comments or thoughts that you might have.

A photo of the Cochrane group that worked on this module, standing by a story board with a tree drawn on it
Taken in Pre-COVID-19 Times
28 September 2020

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