Practice–Research Partnerships and Mentoring to Foster Evidence-Based Decision Making

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers. It takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions. — Anthony Jay, British writer and journalist When practitioners take an evidence-based approach to chronic disease prevention, they undertake several important processes (1): 1) making decisions based on the best available scientific and rigorous program evaluation evidence; 2) applying program planning and quality improvement frameworks; 3) engaging the community and stakeholders in assessment and decision making; 4) adapting evidence-based interventions for specific populations or settings; and 5) conducting sound evaluation. By using an evidence-based approach, activities in public health practice are explicitly linked with the underlying scientific evidence that demonstrates the causes of chronic diseases, epidemiologic patterns of chronic diseases and risk factors, intervention effectiveness, and external validity. The National Cancer Institute’s Research to Reality (R2R) Mentorship Program has a set of competencies that are closely aligned with this concept of evidence-based public health (EBPH) (2). In keeping with R2R program objectives, the articles in this special collection of Preventing Chronic Disease provide some of the best examples to date showing how practice–academic partnerships can produce new scientific information that is timely and relevant for practitioners as they seek to take a more evidence-based approach to chronic disease prevention. This collection builds on recent work from Jacobs and colleagues (3), who presented tools for EBPH practice, and Kaplan and colleagues (4)