RHP (Let people know the results)

This phase can include:

• Co-presenting at conferences and events

• Making plain language or easy read summaries

• Making creative outputs (e.g. art, exhibitions, videos)

• Creating campaigns

• Holding public events with community groups

• Influencing policy and decision-makers

• Working with health workers and consumers to apply the findings

• Co-authoring scientific papers

• Co-authoring policy briefs/recommendations

Here’s what researchers told us and what we learned from other resources:

• Decide as a team who you’re trying to reach (your audience or audiences) and what might engage them best (e.g. writing, events, something else)

• Consider non-traditional dissemination, e.g. posters, comics, videos, social media, flyers, infographics etc.

• Consider working with artists from the community or communities you’re working with to tell the story of the research

• Take time to explain the publication(s) to the team in plain English.

• Create and share pre-publication drafts with the whole team

• Be flexible with different ways to give feedback (e.g. voice note, email, call, track changes)

• Talk about how each person wants to be recognised and named in publications (or not)

• Be sensitive about deficit-based and stigmatising language. Use strengths-based language.

• Make time to celebrate the work and reflect on growth across the team.

• Consider how to continue co-design into evaluation.

Here’s what consumers and carers told us and we learned from other resources

• Decide together what can be shared.

• Be involved in writing up the findings

• Have our feedback on language language that might stigmatise, harm or embarrass consumers or carers. taken seriously and worked through.

• Be involved in sharing the results with the participants and with the wider communities

• Be involved in the evaluation (if we want to be).

• Have time to celebrate the work and the team

❌ Don’t present or publish findings without the endorsement of the people who were involved in the research. Instead, check in with each person. Acknowledge the contributions of all of the team and develop a dissemination strategy/plan with assigned roles. Never include people’s names on research outputs without permission.

❌ Don’t pick the format first. Instead, explore and agree on what different audiences you’re trying to reach and the outcomes you want. Be more specific than ‘all clinicians’ or ‘all consumers.’ You’ll likely need different formats for different audiences and to involve people with different writing and communication skills.

❌ Don’t stop at a publication. Consider ways to share your research so it has more impact e.g. events, social media, radio or tv.

❌ Don’t leave consumers and carers out of the evaluation and evaluation recommendations. Instead ensure consumers and carers play a role in the evaluation and the consumers and carers involved in the team have a chance to share their experience.

❌ Don’t move on to your next project and forget to celebrate the work. Instead, pause and explore ways to celebrate together. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be meaningful.

❌ Don’t be dogmatic about how to share the findings or only consider traditional research outputs such as papers and posters. Instead, also consider art, events, videos, comics or other creative communications.

❌ Don’t share the outcomes only with a restricted academic audience that communities can’t access. Instead, use Open Access journals and write a companion plain language summary with every research publication or report.