Reviewing and re-visioning the aims and scope of public health nursing research: Implications for building research capacity

Delphi surveys and focus groups have provided the backbone for at least three decades of agenda-setting for nursing research. The profession initially turned to these methodologies at a time when it was attempting to establish a still nascent research endeavor. These efforts have been updated periodically and sometimes trained on specific research questions or to address particular clinical problems or populations. Specialty and subspecialty groups within the discipline have also adopted this approach. Follow-up to validate findings, identify continuing gaps, or assess whether, how, and to what extent resultant prioritizations guide or influence researchers, funders and sponsors of research, or research training programs has been sparse.

A continuing, parallel endeavor has been to promote dissemination and use of research findings. The evidence-based practice initiatives throughout the health professions since the 1990s highlighted and perhaps spurred or refocused this dual goal. Informationists, meanwhile, seek to identify and make available key resources deemed essential to a discipline or subspecialty and its students. Their methodologies may be helpful, even essential, for assessing and improving researchers' choices of avenues for disseminating findings to those who would use them. Focusing attention on this matter is made more urgent, given the ever-burgeoning array of publications and other information sources available today. The challenges of knowledge management as well as knowledge sharing are growing.

Strategic planning and best practices for translating research findings to practice—including research practice – need to be incorporated and evaluated. As we move to focus public health nursing research more clearly, we are extending our partnerships and networking across disciplines and with communities. Communication hubs for the continuous flow of information across multiple platforms can enhance extant processes and need to be fully engaged – both to integrate and reinforce lessons learned.

Today's challenge is not only to build capacity for research, but also to transform information into knowledge and knowledge into action.