Abstract
Priority setting in health research can assist stakeholders to identify research and policies that have the greatest potential for benefits to public health. Priority setting has been utilized by researchers to identify barriers, facilitators, and recommendations for future public health research. This commentary describes how a priority-setting approach was used as part of a workshop activity on the school nutrition environment in Ontario, Canada, to facilitate brainstorming, sorting, and rating of concepts related to the school nutrition environment. This work demonstrates an interesting and concrete case of priority setting, of interest for various planning activities (both programming and research), particularly those around school-based healthy eating programs or a related research agenda.
Résumé
L’établissement de priorités de recherche en santé peut aider les acteurs à déterminer la recherche et les politiques les plus susceptibles de présenter des avantages pour la santé publique. Les chercheurs utilisent l’établissement des priorités pour repérer les éléments favorables et défavorables et pour formuler des recommandations de recherche en santé publique à mener à l’avenir. Nous décrivons ici l’utilisation d’une démarche d’établissement des priorités lors d’un atelier sur la nutrition en milieu scolaire tenu en Ontario (Canada) dans le cadre d’une activité ayant consisté à animer une séance de remue-méninges et à trier et évaluer des concepts liés à la nutrition en milieu scolaire. Cela représente un cas concret d’établissement des priorités qui pourrait être intéressant pour diverses activités de planification (de programmes ou d’études de recherche), surtout celles qui s’articulent autour de programmes d’alimentation saine en milieu scolaire ou de priorités de recherche connexes.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alberta Government. (2012). Alberta nutrition guidelines for children and youth: a childcare, school and recreation/community centre resource manual. Available from: https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/1c291796-4eb0-4073-be8e-bce2d331f9ce/resource/3319786c-1df1-43ca-8693-067f733682dc/download/nutrition-guidelines-ab-children-youth.pdf
Buckley, B. S., Grant, A. M., & Glazener, C. M. A. (2013). Case study: a patient–clinician collaboration that identified and prioritized evidence gaps and stimulated research development. J Clin Epidemiol, 66(5), 483–489.
Cooke, J., Ariss, S., Smith, C., & Read, J. (2015). On-going collaborative priority-setting for research activity: a method of capacity building to reduce the research-practice translational gap. Health Research Policy and Systems, 13(25).
Downs, S. M., Farmer, A., Quintanilha, M., Berry, T. R., Mager, D. R., Willows, N. D., et al. (2012). From paper to practice: barriers to adopting nutrition guidelines in schools. J Nutr Educ Behav, 44(2), 114–122.
Fung, C., McIsaac, J. L., Kuhle, S., Kirk, S. F. L., & Veugelers, P. J. (2013). The impact of a population-level school food and nutrition policy on dietary intake and body weights of Canadian children. Prev Med, 57(6), 934–940.
Hsu, C. C., & Sandford, B. A. (2007). The Delphi technique: making sense of consensus. Pract Assess Res Eval, 12(10).
Jansen, M. W. J., van Oers, H. A. M., Kok, G., & de Vries, N. K. (2010). Public health: disconnections between policy, practice and research. Health Research Policy and Systems, 8(37).
Kothari, A., & Wathen, C. N. (2013). A critical second look at integrated knowledge translation. Health Policy, 109, 187–191.
Kothari, A., Regan, S., Gore, D., Valaitis, R., Garcia, J., Manson, H., & O’Mara, L. (2014). Using an integrated knowledge translation approach to build a public health research agenda. Health Research policy and Systems, 12(6).
Manns, B., Hemmelgarn, B., Lillie, E., Crowe, S., Cyr, A., Gladish, M., et al. (2014). Setting research priorities for patients on or nearing dialysis. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol, 9, 1813–1821.
Mayne, S. L., Auchincloss, A. H., & Michael, Y. L. (2015). Impact of policy and built environment changes on obesity-related outcomes: a systematic review of naturally-occurring experiments. Obes Rev, 16(5), 362–375.
McKenna, M. L. (2003). Issues in implementing school nutrition policies. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice & Research, 64(4), 208–213.
McKenna, M. L. (2010). Policy options to support healthy eating in schools. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 101(Suppl 2), S14–S17.
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2010). Policy and program memorandum 150 (P/PM 150): Ontario school food and beverage policy. Available from: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/extra/eng/ppm/150.html
Province of British Columbia. (2013). Guidelines for food and beverage sales in B.C. schools. Available from: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/administration/kindergarten-to-grade-12/healthyschools/2015_food_guidelines.pdf
Rankin, N. M., McGregor, D., Butow, P. N., White, K., Phillips, J. L., Young, J. M., et al. (2016). Adapting the nominal group technique for priority setting of evidence-practice gaps in implementation science. BMC Med Res Methodol, 16(110).
Rosala-Hallas, A., Bhangu, A., Blazeby, J., Bowman, L., Clarke, M., Lang, T., et al. (2018). Global health trials methodological research agenda: results from a priority setting exercise. Trials, 19(48).
Taylor, J. P., MacLellan, D., Caiger, J. M., Hernandez, K., McKenna, M., Gray, B., et al. (2011). Implementing elementary school nutrition policy: principals’ perspectives. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice & Research, 72, e205–e211.
The James Lind Alliance Guidebook. (2018). Available from: http://www.jla.nihr.ac.uk/jla-guidebook/.
Valaitis, R. F., Hanning, R. M., & Herrmann, I. S. (2014). Programme coordinators’ perceptions of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with school nutrition programmes. Public Health Nutr, 17(6), 1245–1254.
Vine, M. M., Elliott, S. J., & Raine, K. D. (2014). Exploring implementation of the Ontario school food and beverage policy at the secondary-school level: a qualitative study. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice & Research, 75(3), 118–124.
Vine, M. M., Harrington, D. W., Butler, A., Patte, K., Godin, K., & Leatherdale, S. T. (2017). Compliance with school nutrition policies in Ontario and Alberta: an assessment of secondary school vending machine data from the COMPASS study. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 108(1), e43–e48.
Acknowledgements
We thank all of the participants in the workshop for their valuable insights into this important topic. This paper would not have been possible without you. This project was entitled, “Developing a research agenda for school nutrition policies in Ontario: a planning meeting including key stakeholders from across Canada”.
Funding
We received financial support from a CIHR Planning and Dissemination Grant (No. 51771).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Based on the report:
Vine, M.M., Leatherdale, S.T., Hanning, R., Skinner, K., Elliott, S.J., Basset-Gunter, R.L., Laxer, R.E., Brown, K., Butler, A., Godin, K.M., Valaitis, R., Patte, K.A. (September 2018). Developing a research agenda for school nutrition policy in Ontario: A planning meeting including key stakeholders from across Canada: A workshop report from November 2 and 3, 2017. Waterloo, ON: University of Waterloo.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vine, M.M., Leatherdale, S.T. & Laxer, R.E. Priority setting for school nutrition research: developing a collaborative research agenda. Can J Public Health 111, 1020–1023 (2020). https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-020-00331-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-020-00331-4