BLOG: How to Communicate Your Research Effectively with Stakeholders? Five key tips from RESPIRE

Dr Genevie Fernandes is a Research Fellow at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, leading stakeholder engagement within the NIHR-funded Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health (RESPIRE). This blog is based on a talk that she gave at an NIHR Early Career Researcher Event in May 2023.

Engaging with a wide range of stakeholders such as patients, community leaders, healthcare providers and policy makers is becoming the norm within health research. Stakeholder engagement is increasingly being recognised and promoted by research funding agencies as an important pathway in achieving impact. Communicating your research with stakeholders and doing so effectively plays a critical role in this engagement process and ultimately in achieving impact. 

However, communicating research with different audiences can sometimes be an unfamiliar territory even for the best of us. So, here are five key tips that can help you tailor your communication with stakeholders for the best results. 

Understand your audience 

Whether it is a patient group, frontline health workers, clinical leaders, or a programme director from the national ministry of health, get to know your audience better. What are they really concerned about? What will get their attention? What language do they understand and speak? Would they prefer a face-to-face conversation or a policy brief? What are the challenges they face? How can your research study and findings help them? Having a better understanding of your audience helps you craft your messages according to their needs and preferences so they are more likely to be receptive to your ideas and engage with you in a dialogue.

Define your communication goals

For each stakeholder group, consider what you want to achieve by communicating with them. If your goal is to raise awareness about health behaviours or gain approval for a research study from community leaders, then your communication with this group can contain specific messages to meet these goals. Deciding on goals from the start of the project can give you clarity in planning your communication. Additionally, clear goals help you track whether your communication has been effective. 

Frame your message

Framing a message is all about what we say and how we say it, as well as what we choose not to say. The choices that we make in our messaging affects how a stakeholder will think, feel and respond to us. If you are pitching an evidence-based health intervention to a policy maker, would you share all its benefits as well as the costs and potential challenges? Would you tell them a story of a patient and their lived experiences and how this intervention could improve the health and quality of life of such patients? Would you present big data to illustrate how many lives could be saved and the cost-effectiveness of this intervention? These are all types of questions to consider when framing your messages for each stakeholder group. 

Identify the right channel and messenger

A channel is the medium through which you will communicate with your stakeholders. This could be mass-media (print, television, radio, posters), mid-media (community events, street theatre), social media (Facebook, Twitter, Zoom, YouTube, WhatsApp), and interpersonal (face-to-face meetings or telephone conversations). Consider which channel would work best for each stakeholder group. Include and involve vulnerable stakeholders who may not have access to media or be hard to reach. Choose the best messenger – someone who is credible and trustworthy and is accepted by the stakeholder (it could even be someone other than yourself!). 

Build in a mechanism for feedback 

Figure out simple ways to gain feedback from your stakeholders as it will help you become a better communicator. Ask your stakeholder if they understood your message? What did they like about it? What could be improved? Such feedback can be sought through informal conversations or a Google form; again, based on whichever channel is the most convenient and accessible for your stakeholder.  

The illustration below was created in real-time during Dr Genevie Fernandes’s talk at a NIHR event in May 2023.