Resource Optimization Toolkit

Introduction

Every year, an abundance of high-quality, evidence based practices emerge from the work of researchers, with the potential to improve outcomes for a range of populations. But these actionable practices often live in dense, inaccessible research studies or massive PDF documents that are challenging to unpack, particularly for on-the-ground practitioners who are busy and juggling many priorities. For these practices to reach the right stakeholders and inform their decision making, they need to be delivered in a way that is highly optimized for their needs – that means attending to timing, format, messenger, and channel. But how do you know what those needs are? And how do you translate those needs into an asset?

This toolkit, based on deep user insights collected over several years, outlines a process for optimizing high-quality resources to meet the needs of practitioners. By applying this process, organizations seeking to support decision-makers can take dense or academic-leaning resources and transform them into high-impact materials by:

(1) repackaging them into new formats (webpages or digital documents) that speak to the intended audiences, and

(2) disseminating them through the right channels and with the right wraparound supports to reach the intended audience.