Unpacking Contexting and Institutionalizing as Complex Sustaining Practices; Comment on “Sustaining Knowledge Translation Practices: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis”

This article discusses the work of Borst et al in which they suggest ‘sustaining work’ as a term that covers the efforts of actors to sustain the use of health research in policy and practice through three practices. I suggest that two of these, contexting and institutionalizing, need to be further unpacked to understand how and why they are important for sustaining work in knowledge translation (KT). To contribute here, I discuss KT as processes of organizational change that occurs within and across organizations, often involving actors with different views on and approaches to the use of health research in policy and practice. These actors will likely have very different understandings of what the context for using research is and they are likely be members of competing or conflicting institutions. Future research needs to take such elements into account to improve our understanding and practice of sustaining work.