Six communities
Six communities are particularly important to discussions about how to strengthen the evidence-support system, as well as who will benefit from a more robust system:
- ‘engaged requesters’ within advisory and decision-making processes
- ‘engaged requesters’ in learning and improvement platforms
- ‘everyday’ citizens
- evidence intermediaries, which is where the ESN-CA secretariat as a whole comes in
- evidence ‘trades’, which is where the four ESN-CA hubs come in (with each focused on a different form of evidence, namely data analytics, behavioural and implementation research, qualitative insights, and evidence synthesis)
- research funders.
Communities 1-3 can play a particularly key role in strengthening the first component of the evidence-support system: the structures and processes on the evidence-demand side to: 1) incorporate evidence into advisory and decision-making processes and into learning and improvement platforms (enablers); 2) build and sustain an evidence culture; and 3) strengthen capacity for evidence use. Community 4 can play a key role in strengthening the second component of the system – ‘interface’ mechanisms – including the evidence-demand prioritization mechanism (elicitation of questions and horizon scanning), request mechanism, evidence-supply coordination mechanism, which can take the form of ultra-rapid evidence support or a ‘general contractor’ model, and response-packaging mechanism. Community 5 can play a key role in strengthening the third component of the system: the supply of evidence via timely demand-driven evidence-support units (the evidence ‘trades’) and the global evidence architecture. Community 6 can play a key role in strengthening many system components.
In 2026, the McMaster Health Forum created a series of six ESN-CA briefs to provide updated and audience-specific messaging for each of the six communities. Each brief can be downloaded from the corresponding community webpage listed above.