Capitalising experiential knowledge in health promotion: An approach to investigate intervention's implementation

To improve the quality of complex health promotion interventions, it is essential to better understand how they are implemented and how they interact with their context. In addition to research-based knowledge, the experiential knowledge of the professionals who implement these interventions should be explored and shared more extensively. The article describes a new qualitative approach and set of tools developed by a committee to collect and document intervention experiences.

This project adopted a participatory, practice-oriented knowledge translation approach within a national, interdisciplinary and inter-organisational governance framework.

A French national committee was established to promote experiential knowledge in health promotion. This committee developed an approach for Capitalising on Experiential Knowledge in Health Promotion: the CEKHP approach. A multi-stage process was followed, which included: reviewing the literature on experiential knowledge, benchmarking existing capitalisation approaches from other sectors and elaborating tools to broadly diffuse the approach to health promotion practitioners.

The CEKHP approach consists of five steps to collect experiences from project managers and implementers about intervention implementation, key functions, stakeholders, and strategies. A guide and a toolkit have been created to support the adoption of CEKHP and ensure proper usage. The data resulting from this capitalisation process, consisting of a short and analytic narrative, is disseminated through a dedicated website, and is intended to inform intervention implementation for practitioners, decision-makers, and researchers alike.

The CEKHP approach enables the collection, analysis, and sharing of professional knowledge about lessons learned from intervention implementation. It contributes to the generation of practice-based evidence, which is crucial for the development of high-quality health promotion interventions.