Knowledge mobilization plan: Food insecurity in Children

Knowledge mobilization plan: Food insecurity in Children

The knowledge mobilization plan serves to detail the steps that are necessary in order to bring the knowledge that has been gained from completing the research paper to the wider audience that will then utilize that information. According to the Toolkit for researchers developed by the government of Ontario, there are five s questions that need to be answered in order to build a successful plant. These are what, to whom, by whom, How and the expect impact of the knowledge mobilization efforts.

The subject of my proposed paper is the impact of food insecurity on children. The message that should be transferred to users will depend upon the completion of the study however in general, I expect that the research will yield recommendations about the harms of food insecurity on children which could vary on the basis of gender and thus provide a specialized way of addressing the problems that face boys and girls individually as well as board policy recommendations. The audience that would most benefit from my research are those who are in the position of the authority to make decisions about the kinds of foods that are available to children and have the opportunity to interact with them on a frequent basis so as to better implement those policy decisions. As such government and school officials are identified as the best target audiences for the knowledge that will be produced from my research.

The question of who is a matter who the messenger should be for the knowledge dissemination. In this case it is my opinion that there is a question of authority. Because of the widespread implication of government and school adoption of any policy or recommendation there is a natural aversion to these groups accepting information that is the least bit questionable in its research or its source. Therefore given the source of the research, a student academic review, directly approaching these groups might not prove fruitful. Instead it would be better to build up grass roots support and attention for issue of child food insecurity.

This can be accomplished by publishing the paper online through respectable channels that accept this kind of channels. Another way to get the information to grass roots is to reword the paper following completion and condensing the information into a series of mall briefs that can then be sent to local organizations that have an interest in child food insecurity such as the food banks in the area, local newspapers who might do a brief on child food insecurity as well as school new sources that might potentially publish a short piece about the student work that has been completed in this area.  In addition the public should become aware of the short and long term effects of food insecurity. Therefore it might be a good idea to provide short briefs from the paper in locations that the public normal associates with food such as food stores near the donation bins for Food banks. This has the dual purpose of informing the public about the be negative impact of food insecurity while encouraging them to be more generous to people who have less food.

It is will be difficult to measure the impact of the knowledge mobilization because there is no plan to monitor statistics from feed Nova Scotia or to measure the increase in public awareness and sentiment towards the issue.  It might be possible to subjectively determine if there is greater public interest through the number or articles published about the topic. The largest indicator that there is a change in public perception as well as government attention would be change in policy.

Reference

Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs. (2010, June). Knowledge Translation and Transfer Plan. Retrieved from omafra.gov.on.ca: http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/research/ktt/kttplan/buildkttplan.pdf