Realizing the potential of embedded implementation research: Lessons from Pakistan
Kumanan Rasanathan, Nhan Tran, Hope L. Johnson, Assad Hafeez, Stefan Peterson, Abdul Ghaffar
Abstract
A t the inception meeting for the project in Pakistan that this supplement draws from, a provincial immunization manager complained about researchers. He was scathing in his assessment that researchers were not helpful to him, that their research was irrelevant to the problems he faced in his work, and moreover, that researchers did not engage with him or share their research. His contention was that their only concern was in publishing papers. These questions about the usefulness of research and the behaviour of researchers may rarely be expressed so bluntly, but they reflect common concerns for policy-makers and programme managers The incentives of research and practice are often misaligned, and there is a disproportionate focus on research that addresses the "what" rather than the "how", or on problems rather than solutions