How Funders Can Close the Gap Between Research and Outcomes
Impact Funders Forum adviser advances inclusive, collaborative, and impactful approaches to research
For nine years, Bev Holmes led Michael Smith Health Research BC, British Columbia’s health research funding agency, where she championed ways to advance knowledge and connect research to practice and policy across the health research system.
Under her leadership, the organization built a strong reputation for advancing evidence-informed decision-making, building research talent, designing innovative funding models, and experimenting with new ways to measure the impact of its research.
Holmes recently joined The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Impact Funders Forum as a senior adviser. In this role, she will help deepen the forum’s work on closing the gap between research and outcomes.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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Q: What’s a story of research impact that motivates you?
A: I’m motivated by stories with surprise endings, or at least stories that end up different from how they started. I recently spoke with my colleague Dr. Rob Olson, who began his research with a specific question about the efficacy of different approaches to cancer radiation treatment, but then eventually changed course to ask a broader, more important one: Why is the evidence that exists on this question not being used?
Our organization funded Rob as a Health Professional-Investigator to understand whether one session of radiotherapy could be as effective as multiple sessions for cancer patients with painful bone metastases. If so, patients wouldn’t have to endure potentially difficult and costly treatments, for which some people had to travel long distances.
It turned out the evidence already existed. So instead of conducting another expensive randomized controlled trial, Rob’s team turned to the question of why the evidence wasn’t being used, despite its significant potential to improve patient care and health system efficiency.
Rob’s research had impact because he took the time to delve into and resolve some tricky system issues, including a lack of support for evidence use in hospitals. He’s not alone, of course; many researchers are doing this hard work. And increasingly, funders are changing their approaches to support and encourage them.
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Q: How does work like Dr. Olson’s connect to the goals of the Impact Funders Forum?
A: I’m impressed and heartened by the number and range of funders who are embracing their role—individually and collectively—in improving the way they fund and support research to maximize its outcomes.
In the example of Dr. Rob Olson, it’s not long ago that a funder might have held him to the original project he’d submitted for funding, despite the fact that it proved duplicative. But in this case, the team wanted to change its approach completely, and we as a funder were open to that. We are certainly not the only ones who would have welcomed that change: Funders are increasingly innovative with program design, flexible with funding, and robust when it comes to monitoring and measuring meaningful progress and outcomes at the program and organizational levels. And Impact Funders Forum has the opportunity to do this important work at a global system level.
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Q: What role do you see funders playing to support a research system that advances critical knowledge and also meets policy and practice needs?
A: Most societal challenges, if not all, span across sectors, so it’s exciting to see funders collaborating to address them. Working together helps reduce potential duplication, maximize resources, apply the knowledge and evidence we have, and learn and adapt as we go.
I think of a funder’s roles at two levels. One is the practical stuff we do together, like designing programs and measuring outcomes. The other is the broader influence funders can have on the research system itself. In my experience, effective funders pay attention to both. They focus on what they can directly control, while also seeking to influence system-level factors that are further outside of their control.
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Q: What is the role that funders play in lifting up research that benefits society?
A: The most obvious answer might be money—I know that’s what many people look to us for! But along with the funding, we also have expertise about how to deploy it in a complex system for maximum benefit.
Collectively, funders have the influence to bring others to the table—be it universities, community members, industry, government, and more—to help put in place the conditions necessary to generate and use research in helpful and impactful ways.
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Q: How do you navigate differing priorities among funders?
A: Funders will always have different priorities at some level, and that’s OK. But I am finding that, at another level, funders’ priorities are similar, despite their different focus. For example, understanding how to measure the impact of our work so we can improve it, communicating the value of research so that it is supported by society, and ensuring that we are funding the right things in the right ways. It’s those similarities that have exciting potential for Impact Funders Forum.
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Q: Why is that? What opportunities do you see for the Impact Funders Forum to grow its influence?
A: I remember how intrigued I was hearing about the work of the forum, and I see that interest in other funders when they hear about it. Increasingly, funders and their partners want to understand how research investments can contribute to positive change in the world. And they know that understanding is not easy to come by: It means working with other funders, with recipients of funding, with system bridging organizations, and with others who understand the problems that are being addressed and the potential solutions.
The Impact Funders Forum offers a meaningful mechanism for bringing this work together.
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