Aging & Social Change: Tenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

The purpose of TRiP (Translating ROAR into Practice) was to engage decision-makers and knowledge users as well as older adult service users and research participants, in the interpretation of the ROAR (researching older adults’ repositioning) study findings and the dissemination of these findings in creative and impactful ways. The TRiP project built on the ROAR study that explored older adults’ views on primary and community care in BC’s Central Interior. It used an integrated knowledge translation (iKT) approach, which arose from the ROAR research participants who indicated that they preferred to give input and influence decision-makers through oral over written means and collective rather than individual dialogues. In addition, participants expressed a strong interest in presenting the findings to decision-makers in collaboration with the ROAR team. As part of TRiP, we held a workshop to disseminate the ROAR study findings to study participants and then develop translation (iKT) tools that included a video of older adults speaking to the findings of the research and a grassroots infographic. We then shared these tools at a Knowledge Summit during which decision-makers and knowledge users worked with ROAR participants and seniors’ advocates to develop strategies to improve community and primary health care for older adults, particularly rural-dwelling ones. Workshop and Summit participants completed questionnaires on taking part in these events and the usefulness of the KT tools. In our paper, we present the infographic and the video, along with the results of our evaluation of this iKT project.