Résumé :
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Introduction: Peel Public Health is one of Canada’s largest public health departments, with 650 staff serving 1.4 million residents. We describe the components, processes and lessons learnt from an organization-wide initiative being implemented by a local public health department to build capacity for evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM).Methods: In 2008, the department began a 10-year strategy for EIDM, partly as a way to address the difficult choices that had to be made because of constrained funding. The strategy involved creating an evidence review process, performing extensive workforce development, and providing consistent funding, a supportive infrastructure and highly visible leadership.Results: Since the initiative launched, assessment and monitoring activities have been conducted to identify the needs of and progress in capacity-building for EIDM and to gauge the use and impact of research in programme decisions. These activities included periodic surveys of senior leaders on the impact of research in their divisions, their participation in research grants as coinvestigators or knowledge users, changes in staff skills to find, appraise and apply research, a case study to assess the penetration of EIDM into the organization, and identifying practice decisions arising from nearly 50 research reviews. The experience demonstrated that an organization can create a culture of and capacity for research use.Conclusion: Our lessons learnt are that this type of change requires strong and persistent senior leadership, investment in the necessary infrastructure and consistent funding, intensive staff training and mentorship, a long timeline, and an intentional change management strategy. Rewards include the workforce having more confidence to apply research findings to practice decisions, and more deliberate and better decisions being made.
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