Knowledge to Action

The program of research is underpinned by the knowledge to action framework from the implementation science literature. Led by CIs Bailie and Chen, AHEAD will consider the barriers and enablers for people with disabilities, health professionals and services providers in current policies to better understand how these drive structural and social inequities and identify additional policy levers that can be applied to narrow inequities. Such an approach involves genuine co-design and participatory processes with people with disability, other stakeholders and policy actors to generate not only relevant evidence, but to maximise uptake of these evidence-based solutions in policy and program reforms.

The qualitative component will involve semi-structured interviews and focus groups to identify barriers and facilitators of mobilising research evidence in practice. The quantitative component will include using health preference assessment methods, in particular discrete choice experiments (led by CI Chen), which seek to not only understand the preferences of people with disabilities but also to estimate their behavioural response, such as likely uptake which may differ depending on how policies are implemented. For example, individuals with disabilities will be asked to choose between alternative hypothetical employment programs that encourage and support them working. These employment programs will have different attributes including the types of support provided. Random utility models will be used to analyse the choice data from respondents allowing for different preferences by disability types. Understanding and incorporating the preferences from people with disability will allow us to design the optimal employment programs and determine the likely uptake rate which will be then used to model the downstream consequences for health and healthcare costs.

Based on this evidence and the evidence from the other research hubs we will trial and evaluate promising co-designed solutions compared to current practice. AHEAD will explore the feasibility of these solutions in pilot trials which, if successful, will form the basis of grant applications for larger trials and evaluations beyond AHEAD. CI Petrie has extensive experience in conducting successful large-scale trials including ones that have been published in the Lancet, JAMA, BMJ and PLOS Medicine and will provide training and support on the conduct of trials.