SPHERE x UTS

SPHERE is the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise, also known as Maridulu Budyari Gumal, and is a collaboration between 14 organisations in the name of health research. In 2021, the brief provided by SPHERE’s Knowledge Translation team asked us to pitch an intervention that promoted their focus: knowledge translation. We were given freedom in choosing whether this be within the organisation or externally, between specific research stakeholders, or in interaction with a broader audience.

Put simply, knowledge translation, or KT, involves translating knowledge from researchers, with its scientific terms and jargon, to specific stakeholders, such as practitioners and the general public, in a way that makes it accessible, easy to understand, and thus effective. This was an extremely complex problem space to work in, especially given the context of a global pandemic.

The first half of our journey was full of sense-making and both divergent and convergent thinking. We conducted research, using both primary and secondary methodologies, to better understand our problem space and the existing context we would be intervening in. Much of the first few sessions involved reading through the KT team’s website. After this, we used a plethora of BCII methods. These included stakeholder mapping, interviews, surveys, rich pictures (visual representations of our understanding), and 5 Whys (causality chain).

After a month of research, we then moved into reframing our problem space. In the end, we narrowed down our problem statement to this:

In the context of a society grappling with COVID-19, how might we increase public interest in their own healthcare experience by promoting the benefits of knowledge translation and agency in their own wellbeing? How do we target the 18-25 age group in learning more about health myths and misconceptions in order to shift from a curative to a preventative healthcare system?

The next step of our journey was ideating and prototyping – coming up with the intervention we would ultimately pitch. We used a different variety of methods to do this.

Crazy 8s: Coming up with 8 ideas in 8 minutes. Speed over quality.
Pivot or persevere: Pivoting when faced with hurdles.
Surveys: Targeting 18-25 year olds to understand how they access health information.
Prototypes: Conducting Instagram surveys and creating a sample podcast episode.
Safe-to-fail experiments: QR code link to Instagram page taped to lollies in BCII space to increase social media traffic, Google ad, landing page experiment with the podcast’s Soundcloud
Feedback loops: Weekly meetings with SPHERE and our tutor.

Our intervention

The final intervention we pitched to SPHERE was three-fold. First, we wanted to focus on their social media branding. Second, we would introduce a podcast. Finally, we also provided SPHERE with a contingency plan.

As our target audience was a younger one (18-25), it was essential for SPHERE to have a solid foundation for their social media. We chose to focus mainly on Instagram, as this was the most popular social media platform for that age group as evident from our surveys. We created a number of posts and increased both the following and follower count, aiming to create more interaction for the accounts. For SPHERE’s future social media producing, we provided multiple templates that used the colour palettes already in their website for a sense of cohesion.

Our podcast ‘Alive and Kicking’ aimed to mainly address the second part of our problem statement, regarding health misconceptions and myths. With the oversaturation of health information during COVID-19, finding accurate facts suddenly became more difficult. Alive and Kicking was effective in providing accurate information while also presenting SPHERE as a trustworthy source of information to audiences. We spoke with three different Clinical Academic Groups (CAG) at SPHERE to bust some health myths and encourage listeners to reclaim their agency regarding health. The podcast platform was chosen for accessibility and engagement levels. Alive and Kicking was also uploaded to Spotify.

Each podcast episode focused on the work of a different CAG and a health myth in their field. One team member would interview a representative from the CAG and asks a range of questions, allowing the expert to explain the truth about the health myth as well as risks and protective factors for various health issues.

Overall, a 20 to 30 minute online or in-person interview was required and the audio editing took a maximum of two hours to complete, utilising Audacity. An intro and outro jingle was created to add to the episodes, which were approximately 20 minutes. SPHERE treasures lived experience and every podcast description advertised the opportunity for individuals to be featured on the podcast to share their journey.

Proof of concept

Our intervention provides three main forms of value to SPHERE. Firstly, the podcast incorporates lived experiences and invites listeners to interact with the podcast, creating an opportunity for SPHERE to connect with its audience. Secondly, the Instagram and podcast will further establish SPHERE’s public presence, hence increasing publicity and exposure. As SPHERE’s community grows, its audience will exponentially access SPHERE’s website and perceive it as a credible source of information. Finally, and most importantly, our intervention demonstrates knowledge translation from within the organisation to the external community. The podcast translates evidence-based medical knowledge in an engaging and interactive way. As KT is highly complex, resources would be better used demonstrating rather than explaining it.

Challenges and barriers

Due to the time restraints of the project, we were unable to fully test the most effective method of promoting the podcast. We hypothesise that Twitter would also be an effective platform, as non-followers may also see SPHERE’s Tweets, allowing SPHERE to reach a broader audience.

Another challenge was the unavailability of members from SPHERE’s CAGs. This severely limited our podcast options, as some research areas were more suited towards younger audiences but were unavailable for interviews. Further testing is therefore required to gauge younger audience engagement specifically.