Are communities of practice improving health outcomes?
Food insecurity is a topic close to the heart of Monash Nutrition researcher and Accredited Practising Dietitian Liza Barbour. Public health nutrition is Liza’s bread and butter, having worked with those experiencing food insecurity locally and abroad for over 14 years, and now, undertaking valuable research to determine if our efforts to alleviate this growing issue are working.
Until recently, Liza worked with the food rescue charity SecondBite. Amidst the chaos of attracting funding and moving as much food from A to B, this sector is desperately trying to put an ‘end to food insecurity’ as documented in the mission statements of many food rescue organisations. Academics, journals and those at the front line are all asking – ‘is it actually working’?
In 2015, Liza flexed her web development muscles, and established the online community of practice (CoP) for Australia’s charitable food sector www.charitablefoodsector.org.au. This CoP boasts 250 members from across Australia and is constantly growing. They hold an annual face-to-face forum and using the website disseminate the latest in food security and emergency food relief research.
“This work got me thinking about just how effective knowledge translation strategies, like the CoP, can be in influencing change amongst the population that the food insecurity workforce is striving to serve” said Liza. It has been a long journey, with the research question and design being established with research partners at the University of Melbourne back in 2014. “I’ve had 2 babies since those early meetings so am delighted to see the findings from our research finally available to the sector”.
The research team conducted a systematic review to understand whether public health CoPs can influence public health outcomes, and if so, under what circumstances they are most effective. They also sought to identify suitable evaluation methods and tools to effectively measure the impact of a CoP.
Twelve evaluation studies of 10 independent CoP interventions were identified. Of the ten CoPs, those most effective at influencing public health practice were those which provided problem-solving opportunities, reflective practice and encouraged networking. Unfortunately, none of the evaluation studies were able to describe an actual change to public health outcomes, so the influence of CoPs as a tool to improve actual public health practice remains unknown. “To be able to measure this impact, the evaluation methods and instruments must be promoted more broadly and made more widely available” said Liza.
Workforce development strategies such as the CoP, require significant resources to establish and co-ordinate. Without effective evaluation methods and instruments, the true impact of these strategies will remain unknown. Evaluation of CoP’s need to consider the many components of a CoP such as the format for interaction (e.g. online, face to face, blended), intended goals for CoP, context, stage of development, activities and level of impact).
The research team are currently evaluating CoP’s in the Australian Charitable Food Sector, with the results to be released shortly. “Hopefully this will showcase an example of an effect approach to evaluating the true impact of a CoP on public health outcomes”.
More Information
This research was conducted in collaboration with the University of Melbourne
Liza Barbour, Rebecca Armstrong, Patrick Condron, Claire Palermo, (2018) "Communities of practice to improve public health outcomes: a systematic review", Journal of Knowledge Management, https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-03-2017-0111
Liza Barbour is a Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition and Food Sustainability Systems at the Monash University Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food. She is also a Co-Convenor with the Right to Food Coalition. You can follow Liza on Twitter via @Liza_R_Barbour.
Stay up to date with the Monash University Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food on Twitter via @MonashNutrition.
Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash.
