How can knowledge mobilisation support decision making in policy and practice: lessons from the Covid-19 era

27 February 2025

In this blog, Dr Micaela Gal takes a closer look at how the Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre (2021 to 2023) did rapid research and worked with decision makers, including from Social Care Wales, to help answer urgent questions during the pandemic.

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed health and social care needs, and the way essential services were delivered in Wales and beyond. Health and social care policy and practice decisions had to be made quickly and be informed by evidence.

Getting research evidence understood and used by those making decisions became even more challenging during the pandemic.

Some of the barriers included:

needing rapid answers to urgent questions
not knowing if research evidence existed, or where to find it
knowing when to trust research
not having time to find, understand and summarise research
finding research language difficult to understand and not being confident in their own research skills.

The Covid-19 Evidence Centre

The Centre did rapid reviews of research evidence to identify, appraise and summarise available research evidence. It carried out knowledge mobilisation to ensure that the right information was available to the right people, at the right time.

Researchers at the Centre worked closely with the key decision makers or their representatives:

to make sure that the rapid reviews focused on what they needed
to discuss the policy and practice implications of the findings
to ensure the outputs (reports, infographics, lay summaries and so on) could be widely understood
to help plan and support knowledge mobilisation
to identify the difference (impact) the work had made.

A public partnership group were also involved throughout.

The Centre carried out knowledge mobilisation to make sure that the right information was available to the right people, at the right time

Valuable lessons

Lessons learnt during the lifetime of the Evidence Centre are now informing the Health and Care Research Wales Evidence Centre.

Engagement and co-production with decision makers is essential. Everyone’s knowledge and experience is needed.
Decision makers are invaluable in helping to plan and support knowledge mobilisation.
Making research findings accessible is key. Researchers should not assume that everyone has research knowledge and they should use plain language.

Find out more

The Centre and collaborators, including from Social Care Wales, wrote a paper to reflect on their knowledge mobilisation processes, and share barriers and lessons learned.

You can access the full report and supporting infographics relating to this work.

Read Dr Micaela Gal’s guest blog on knowledge mobilisation methods.

You can also contact the Social Care Wales knowledge mobilisation team directly at: knowledgemobilisation@socialcare.wales.

Blog written by

Dr Micaela Gal

Health and Care Research Wales Evidence Centre

I worked for many years in the NHS as a microbiologist and then in Cardiff University as a researcher in trials around infections and the responsible use of antibiotics. We did the research and published in journals.

However, I became more and more interested in how to make research findings accessible and understood so they can be used to make a difference. So about 10 years ago, I moved to roles which focused on knowledge mobilisation and ways to help research findings be used to inform practice.

In the Evidence Centre, I work with Elizabeth Doe who is the research prioritisation and impact manager. Together with interest holders and members of our public partnership group we develop knowledge mobilisation plans for each piece of research, produce infographics, lay summaries and social media pieces, arrange evidence briefings and track the difference the research is making.

We are also doing work on the language used in our reports, to make sure this is understood by people who are not researchers.

Outside of work I love being outdoors, gardening, walking my dogs, and caring for my six elderly pet sheep Gioia, Genna, Goose, Bart, Charlie and Derek.