How video can increase policy-maker understanding and commitment to using health research evidence for policy and practice changes

Public health officials are faced with multiple and often competing priorities and information, and the results of health research are often not seen, or disregarded in the policy-making process. Studies have documented that policy-makers want more than quantitative or qualitative data; they want to know how the target user or community feels about the innovation, and to see and hear how involved and committed they are.

A trial in the Gambia on malaria preventive treatment to pregnant women in low-income settings offered the opportunity to test videotaped stories of research participants as a way of sharing local context and perceptions at a national policy panel discussion of the research results. Videos have been found to be acceptable and used widely in development but no studies have been found on this for health policy.

This 16 April, 2018 presentation at the International Social and Behavior Change Communication Summit in Bali, Indonesia provides an overview of qualitative research that followed the video presentation.

The objective of the study was to explore the acceptability and value of the use of videotaped stories of study participants as an additional tool to provide research results to policy-makers and practitioners that would increase commitments to community-supported changes.

Narrative approaches allowed people to tell their stories, providing for more nuanced interpretations of the study value, utilising the social interaction model of research uptake that values the perspectives of both researchers and the users. These stories were used to reinforce social research identifying the barriers that needed to be addressed, and shown at a meeting to review the research findings among policy-makers, practitioners and key stakeholders. A discussion period after the showing provided time to clarify understanding, question perspectives and come to agreement on a response to the research.

Semi-structured interviews of panel members were conducted after the meeting, with discussion notes and interview transcripts coded for thematic content analysis to identify patterns and concepts.

The presentation highlights the main themes that came out of the video presentation: 1) It brought to the policy panel the perceptions of those who would not have otherwise been included in the review of evidence and the local context; 2) It built upon earlier evidence of video effectiveness to provide information that incorporates emotion and storytelling, which is different from traditional evidence dissemination formats like policy briefs; and 3) It provided strong evidence on the positive perceptions of the policy-makers to this documentary form of “entertainment-education,” and increased motivation to implement the study recommendations.

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