Factors that Facilitate and Impede Effective Knowledge Translation in Population Health Promotion: Results from a Consultation Workshop in Iran

The workshop that this paper reports, held in Iran in May of 2011, at the 1st Interna tional and 4th National Congress on Health Education and Promotion, had three main objec tives: 1) to introduce participants to the knowledge translation (KT) concept, along with its models and methods; 2) to enhance participants’ knowledge of how KT could apply to public health education and promotion; and 3) to learn from different participating stakeholder groups about the factors that facilitate or impede effective KT in public health education and promotion in Iran. The workshop consisted of three components: introducing the KT concept, assessing the KT capacity of participants, and facilitating a discussion of the important contextual factors that promote and impede effective KT. Of the 26 individuals from across the country participat ing in the workshop, 17 took part in a KT capacity assessment activity. They classified them selves into one of the following three stakeholder groups: administrators and policymakers (n=6), practitioners (n=2), and researchers (n=9). There were different capacities for KT across the three stakeholder groups. The re-ported challenges for effective KT include “lack of resources and funding”; “lack of time”; “poor quality of relationships and lack of trust between health policymakers, administrators, re-searchers, and clinicians”; “inadequate skills possessed by healthcare professionals and adminis-trators for assessment and adaptation of research findings”; and “poor involvement of commu-nity partners in the research process.” There is a great need to develop effective strategies to overcome the reported barri ers for effective KT.