Appendix E: Workshop Design Guide

Overview/ purpose:

The academic team (UoY/ UH) will conduct a total of three workshops with separate events for each audience (national and local policymakers; public sector practitioners; and commercial practitioners). The purpose of these workshops is to understand inductively the needs of the different audiences to inform a set of principles for translating evidence to, and influencing adoption into practice, for each audience. Data from the workshops will be synthesised and key findings will be tested in a smaller feedback session comprising a representative sample of the workshop participants. 

End-user groups and recruitment:

For the purposes of this project, an ‘end user’ is understood as an individual or organisation professionally involved, either directly or indirectly, in the provisioning of food and, as such, are in a position to influence what people eat. End-users are categorised into the following groups:

• National and local POLICYMAKERS (health/ safety/ standards, environment, trade, agriculture, industry, public health, planning, business/ economic, education);
• Public sector/ PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONERS (health professionals, public sector food procurement, education-on-diet practitioners, third sector practitioners); and
• COMMERCIAL PRACTITIONERS on the consumption end (retailers, caterers, restaurants) 

Participants will be recruited from our networks throughout the food system. During the recruitment process, we will pay particular attention to diversity of organizational type and expertise to ensure appropriate spread/ representation between the different groups. Recruits will be contacted via email in the first instance and sent digitally the Participant Information Sheet and relevant consent forms. The workshops themselves will be conducted digitally via Zoom; confirmed participants will be sent the relevant joining information 1-2 days before the scheduled workshop date.

Session aims:

The workshops include three separate workshop sessions, organised for the above audiences (for example, 1a. policymakers, 1b. public sector/ professional practitioners, 1c. commercial practitioners). The aim of these workshops is to listen and understand the needs of the different audiences and what influences their decision-making regarding healthy sustainable diets, to inform the development of a set of principles for translating evidence to influence adoption into practice. Breakout rooms will be randomly assigned on the day, based on total participant numbers per workshop. The workshops will be inductive, based on the following questions:

• who is responsible for making decisions / implementing changes in their area of work (for example, who do we need to communicate evidence to/ influence?)
• how they make decisions/ what informs these decisions (What do they currently consider? Do they consider any evidence at the moment? If yes, what evidence? How is this communicated to them? If not, why not?) (including the role of intermediary organisations such as professional bodies)
• have they recently made any changes to encourage healthy sustainable diets? What changes have they made? Why did they make these changes?
• barriers to and enablers for translation and adoption of evidence for healthy, sustainable diets
• needs for understanding, translating and adopting evidence for healthy, sustainable diets (for example, end-user needs for form, format, design, presentation and type of evidence on a particular intervention in order to be most likely to implement it)

Pre-workshop task for Participants

To help participants prepare for the workshops we will set a pre-workshop task and ask them to think about an example of a decision or change that has occurred in their place of work, ideally related to healthy sustainable diets (who made the decision, what information sources did they use, why was the decision made etc.). This will support more considered responses during the workshops. Workshop questions are as follows:

Question overview:

• how is evidence used to inform decision making?
• who is responsible for making decisions / implementing changes in your area of work (for example, who do we need to communicate evidence to/ influence?)
• how do you make decisions/ what informs these decisions?
• what do you currently consider? 
• how important is evidence to you and to what extent are you motivated by this evidence? 
• what would ‘good’ evidence translation look like to you and why?
• what evidence if any are you currently considering/adopting and implementing at the moment?  If yes, what evidence? How is this communicated to you? 
• what have you recently changed if anything at all to encourage healthy sustainable diets? 
• what changes have you made? 
• why did they you these changes?
• what are the current barriers to encouraging sustainable healthy diets?
• what are the current enablers to encouraging sustainable healthy diets?

Workshop Agenda:

00:00 – 00:05 Introductions and project overview (10 mins) (Bob /Kelly)
Introduce facilitators and ask participants to introduce themselves, start recording, briefly outline the agenda, definitions of terms and provide a quick project overview (i.e. what are sustainable healthy diets, what aim to accomplish in the session, etc.). In addition, Bob to reiterate confidentiality, the right to withdraw, voluntary nature of the study. Ask participants if they have any questions so far.

00:10 – 00:15 Warm-up Task (5 mins) (Rachel)
Rachel to ask for some participants to volunteer to share any thoughts regarding the pre-workshop task to start stimulating thinking and discussion about the changes they have made in terms of healthy sustainable diets.

00:15 – 00:30 Breakout Discussion 1: How are decisions made? Is evidence considered/important? (15 mins)
Questions to ask: 

• how are decisions made? 
• what informs these decisions? 
• who is responsible for making decisions? 
• who is responsible for implementing changes in your area of work? 
• how important is evidence to you when making decisions? [Probe: do you actively seek out evidence? Why / why not? When would you consider evidence, and when wouldn’t you – for example, are there decisions that evidence is more important for?]
• which types/ forms of evidence do you consider and why? [Probe 1: around why they might consider one type of evidence over another. Do they consider any to be better? Why? Probe 2: if they don’t consider evidence, why not?] 
• can you think of any examples of where you’ve made a decision or change based on evidence? [Probe: why did they decide to implement this piece of evidence? What was it about this piece of evidence that made you adopt it? How was it communicated with them?]

00:35 – 00: 50 Breakout Discussion 2:  How is evidence currently communicated to you, and how would you like it to be communicated to you? (15 mins)
Questions to ask: 

• can you give examples of how evidence has been communicated with you? What are the strengths of the way it’s done, and what are the weaknesses? 
• what would ‘good’ evidence translation look like to you and why? [Probe: content of communication (do they want recommendations, summaries, key points, methodology, level of detail), how tailored do they want the communication to be, format of communication (e.g. workshop, conference, digital, offline etc), language used, visuals used, the person/body communicating the evidence, timing (i.e. what is the right time for evidence to feed into a decision?)] 
• what impact would better translation of evidence have on implementation into policy or practice? [Probe: would better communication of evidence increase likelihood of adoption, or are they not open to taking evidence on?]

00:50 – 00: 55 Break (5 mins)

00:55 – 01:25 Breakout Discussion 3: Barriers and enablers to evidence use – Jamboard session
This section of the workshop will be organised in two parts. First, participants will consider what are their current barriers to and enablers for adopting evidence to encourage healthy sustainable diets? This section will be a brainstorming session on what makes it difficult to use and implement evidence and possible enablers/solutions that could help overcome these barriers. Participants will be given approximately 8 minutes on each to record their thoughts on Jamboard (20 mins). 

The second section will focus on discussing the Jamboard results and collaboratively ranking and prioritising the barriers and enablers. (10 mins) Participants will also have opportunity, through discussion, to add/ change the barriers and enablers that were brainstormed in the first part. (30 mins in total).

01:25 – 01:30 Wrap-up (5 mins)
Thank participants for joining, provide facilitator contact details for any follow-ups and describe briefly ‘what next’ for the project, including any follow-up with participants regarding the feedback session.

Draft Invitation text

Dear XXX

I am making contact today to invite you to take part in a research project on ‘Optimising evidence for policy and practice: shifting toward sustainable and healthy diets’. This project is commissioned and funded by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). It aims to understand how evidence could be better translated to policy makers and practitioners to increase adoption into policy and practice. This project is being conducted by the University of York in partnership with the University of Hertfordshire.

Your insights into these challenges would be particularly valuable, given your experience in the field, and I would like to invite you to take part in an interactive workshop (90 minutes) via Zoom. This will take place on XXX and your participation will contribute to a set of important principles for translating evidence to and influencing adoption into practice and a final research report that will be distributed via FSA and university networks.

We would really appreciate if you could join us as your insights on the topic of healthy sustainable diets are valuable to this work. I have attached a Participant Information Sheet, which will provide you with more detailed information on the project, and a consent form for you to read, sign and return. Everything will be anonymous.

Thank you for your time and look forward to hearing from you soon.

All the best,
[Facilitator name]

(To send to confirmed participants) To get everyone in the frame of mind for the workshop we would like you to think about an example of a decision or change that has occurred in your place of work, ideally related to healthy sustainable diets (who made the decision, what information sources did they use, why was the decision made etc.). 

Feedback Session

Before the feedback session, the academic team will identify from the workshop synthesis a set of guidance principles (identified by the end-user groups in the first set of workshops) to apply and test guidance for effective evidence communication and adoption. We will accomplish this by drafting summary guidance document(s) targeted to the needs of different participant groups (again based on the findings from the first set of workshops). The feedback session will elicit feedback on the usability and applicability of the guidance. During the feedback session participants from the different audiences will be moved into breakout rooms.