What is RUSH about?

The Research Utilization Support and Help (RUSH) project exists to support NIDRR grantees in their efforts to get their NIDRR-funded research findings used in targeted, measurable ways.

What is dissemination and
knowledge utilization?


The outcome of
dissemination is utilization.

RUSH staff

• Offers workshops and individual technical assistance to NIDRR grantees on research utilization strategies, outcomes, and measurement issues
  
  
• Compiles, summarizes and makes available to the public in an online "Research Utilization Toolbox" tools and secondary literature related to research utilization
  
  
• Collects, analyzes and reports data from NIDRR grantees about their research utilization activities
  
  
• Partners with NIDRR grantees to conduct projects that develop research utilization strategies and measure their outcomes

What is a RUA?

RUSH is using the Research Utilization Award (RUA) as a mechanism to partner with NIDRR grantees who have a body of NIDRR-funded research findings and an identified target audience who can benefit from them via implementation of a promising, preferably proven, utilization strategy. The RUA offered financial support (up to $100,000) for implementing research utilization strategies and demonstrating how and if they work in measurable ways for the new target audience. The goal is to offer to the broader NIDRR community exemplars of research utilization that have thus been proven effective.

How were RUAs awarded?

Interested NIDRR grantees, orally or in writing, proposed to RUSH staff ideas for research utilization strategies related to their existing NIDRR-funded work. These ideas needed eventually to conform to the criteria specified in the formal written proposal. RUSH staff reviewed these proposals and made awards based on how well the proposed projects met those criteria. RUSH also strove to maintain in the RUA portfolio a diversity of NIDRR funding mechanisms (e.g. RERC, RRTC, DRRP, SBIR, etc.) across the Institute's priorities (health and function; technology for access and function; employment outcomes; and independent living and community integration).

In Fall 2006, RUSH received over $3 million in requests to fund Research Utilization Awards (RUAs). Since funding for RUAs in the current RUSH funding cycle has been exhausted, there will not be another request for RUA applications in Fall 2007.

Summaries of current RUA activities detail the activities of each of the five current awardees. This "Update" will highlight the activities of the Beach Center.

What are the objectives of the Beach Center's RUA?

As paraphrased from its proposal, the Beach Center on Disability, a Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Policies Impacting Families of Children with Disabilities, proposes to expand its current knowledge utilization and dissemination activities using Communities of Practice (CoPs), by designing, implementing, and investigating a Web-supported CoP for one of its NIDRR-funded communities:  A Community of Practice on Family Supports and Services in Early Childhood Programs.  Its original RRTC application committed it to developing a face-to-face CoP and email for the purpose of knowledge synthesis and translation.

         The short-term and intermediate outcomes for the NIDRR-funded work are:

• Short-term Outcome. The CoP will be the primary vehicle for developing and operationalizing a Family Supports Framework that will guide target stakeholders (families, practitioners, researchers, university professors) in designing policies and practices to meet the needs of families of young children with disabilities.
• Intermediate Outcome.  A minimum of one state will adopt the Family Supports Framework and develop policies to require family outcomes exceeding the current family outcomes in early intervention required by the Office of Special Education Programs (within the Department of Education); the Beach Center also proposes that a minimum of two local early intervention agencies will adopt the Family Supports Framework to provide supports to families and measure outcomes based on these supports.

What has the Beach Center accomplished so far with its RUA?

RUSH staff asked Dr. Ann Turnbull, principal investigator for the RUA, to elaborate upon what the RUA has enabled the Beach Center to do. She responded as follows:

The Research Utilization Award has enabled the Beach Center on Disability to expand its Early Childhood Family Support community of practice (CoP) from approximately 30 members who met twice a year, to a community of over 200 members who meet daily in an online format. The online CoP includes 100 family members of a child with a disability, 122 early childhood professionals who serve children and families, 40 researchers, and 16 policy leaders (note: some of the members claim more than one of these roles). These members come from 39 states in the United States as well as 2 additional countries (China and South Korea). In addition to our success with CoP members, we know that the community is having an impact far beyond its membership. For example, during the lifetime of the CoP, which launched on June 15, 2007, we have had 1,355,116 "hits" with an average of 5,622 hits per day. These translate to 347,768 page views. Those people who visit the CoP website average 14.08 page views per visit. Most are non-members who even though they do not participate in the discussions, they read the discussion threads and download policy information and family success stories. Most likely, they are people we would not have been able to serve without the Research Utilization Award.

The mission of the Early Childhood Family Support CoP is to foster wisdom-based action in order to make sustainable enhancements in quality of life for families of young children with disabilities.  To us, wisdom-based action involves integrating values, vision, and local factors (child/family/system/community) with knowledge (experiential insight and research-based) to make and implement sound and balanced judgments in order to enhance quality of life.  We foster wisdom-based action through the discussions in this unique online environment in which trust, respect, positive communication, commitment, competence, and equality enable us to work in partnership in order to synthesize the best available research, family and professional insight, and research-based knowledge for the ultimate benefit of families and practitioners. Wisdom-based action also includes influencing policy to increase the likelihood that policy will provide systemic enhancements in family quality of life.

Finally, our vision for families and practitioners is that they will be both informed and inspired to take action in implementing wise solutions. Our vision for researchers is that they will be informed and inspired by how families and practitioners use the best available research that they produce to make wise decisions; and, furthermore, that they will listen to families' and practitioners' burning questions as a guide for their future research.  Finally, our vision for policy leaders is that they will work in partnership with families, professionals, and researchers to translate the integration of best available research, family wisdom, and professional wisdom into federal and state policy.

To access the web-based CoP, please click the highlighted link above or enter the following URL address into the address line of your Web browser:

http://beachcop.beachcenter.org/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=393&lang=en-US

Contact us

We encourage you to contact RUSH at 1-800-761-7874 or 512-476-6861 or by email rush@sedl.org with any question about the content of this update or research utilization in general.