Sociological aspects of knowledge translation

Knowledge translation – the ubiquity of this term extends to policy, scholarship, and practice, internationally. This ubiquity is particularly the case in healthcare. Consider the efforts of several international bodies to promote knowledge translation – these bodies include the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2015, n.d.), the National Health and Medical Research Council (n.d.) in Australia, and the National Health Service in the United Kingdom (Stansfield & South, 2018). Thus, this special issue on the sociological aspects of knowledge translation is important, timely, and particularly relevant to the sociology of health, illness, and medicine. This is for four key reasons. First, given different (if not heightened) societal expectations, many government bodies and international organisations now expect different knowledges to be represented in research about health(care). Second, the processes through which different knowledges coalesce demonstrate the myriad interactions between society and health. Third, knowledge translation requires sociologically informed scholarship that accounts for how social interactions and political processes influence health, illness, and medicine. And fourth, First Nations Peoples have emphasised that knowledge translation should be grounded in respect for diverse knowledges and that it should operate relationally rather than uni-directionally. Furthermore, making knowledge translation foundational to research design and communication provides an opportunity to demonstrate respect for First Nations People’s enduring connections to Country, intergenerational responsibilities, and knowledge of communities (Williams & Marlin, 2022).