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It’s hard to play ball: A qualitative study of knowledge exchange and silo effects in public health

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Health Services Research, January 2018
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (79th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (65th percentile)

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Title
It’s hard to play ball: A qualitative study of knowledge exchange and silo effects in public health
Published in
BMC Health Services Research, January 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12913-017-2770-6
Pubmed ID
Authors

Rebecca Johnson, Amy Grove, Aileen Clarke

Abstract

Partnerships in public health form an important component of commissioning and implementing services, in England and internationally. In this research, we examine the views of staff involved in a City-wide health improvement programme which ran from 2009 to 2013 in England. We examine the practicalities of partnership work in community settings, and we describe some of barriers faced when implementing a large, multi-organisation health improvement programme. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were performed. Purposive sampling was used to identify potential participants in the programme: programme board of directors, programme and project managers and intervention managers. Interviews were conducted one-to-one. We conducted a thematic analysis using the 'one sheet of paper' technique. This involved analysing data deductively, moving from initial to axial coding, developing categories and then identifying emerging themes. Fifteen interviews were completed. Three themes were identified. The first theme reflects how poor communication approaches hindered the ability of partnerships to deliver their aims and objectives in a range of ways and for a range of reasons. Our second theme reflects how a lack of appropriate knowledge exchange hindered decision-making, affected trust and contributed to protectionist approaches to working. This lack of shared, and communicated, understanding of what type of knowledge is most appropriate and in which circumstance made meaningful knowledge exchange challenging for decision-making and partnership-working in the City-wide health improvement programme. Theme three demonstrates how perceptions about silos in partnership-working could be problematic, but silos themselves were at times beneficial to partnerships. This revealed a mismatch between rhetoric and a realistic understanding of what components of the programme were functional and which were more hindrance than help. There were high expectations placed on the concept of what partnership work was, or how it should be done. We found our themes to be interdependent, and reflective of the 'dynamic fluid process' discussed within the knowledge mobilisation literature. We contend that reframing normal and embedded processes of silos and silo-working already in use might ease resistance to some knowledge exchange processes and contribute to better long-term functioning of public health partnerships.

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The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 12 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 79 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 79 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 17 22%
Student > Ph. D. Student 10 13%
Researcher 6 8%
Student > Bachelor 4 5%
Unspecified 3 4%
Other 12 15%
Unknown 27 34%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 14 18%
Social Sciences 10 13%
Business, Management and Accounting 6 8%
Medicine and Dentistry 4 5%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 3 4%
Other 14 18%
Unknown 28 35%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 February 2019.
All research outputs
#4,179,254
of 23,015,156 outputs
Outputs from BMC Health Services Research
#1,953
of 7,706 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#91,882
of 442,119 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Health Services Research
#56
of 166 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,015,156 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 81st percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,706 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.8. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 74% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 442,119 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 166 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 65% of its contemporaries.