The playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

The same problem often applies to communicating your research findings, says Renee Salas, MD, MPH.

“You spend many long hours and late nights to create your manuscript, then you finally get it published and expect the world will see it and it will change things,” Salas explains. “Unfortunately, statistics show that for most publications that does not occur.”

That’s why Salas encourages researchers to go the extra mile to communicate their findings to patients, policy makers and the general public using all the tools at their disposal—the media, social media, first-person articles and conversations with stakeholders and policymakers.

“Think about why you picked the research area you chose, what your passion is and what change you want to see in the world,” she says. “Then think about who needs to hear it and sit down and talk to those people.”

Salas is an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Yerby Fellow at the Center for Climate Health and the Global Environment at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School for Public Health.

Her comments came during a recent Translation in Motion Webinar Series hosted by OptumLabs. The series is targeted towards researchers and other healthcare system stakeholders who are interested in driving health system change and promoting health.

While her talk focused on her efforts to raise awareness of the health implications of climate change, the same principles apply to all researchers who are hoping to make an impact with their work.

Finding Your Passion

Salas did not set out to become a climate change researcher—it was something borne out of completing a wilderness medicine fellowship during her training as an emergency medicine physician.

“This allowed me to practice in different parts of the word where the climate change was having a much starker impact on health,” she says. “Especially on the surrounding environment.”

She then pursued a master’s degree in public health with a concentration in environmental health, which set her on a course of research, education and clinical work. “Clearly, life leads you in different directions, and each step helps you find what your true passion is,” she says.

“If you are early in your training and you have a passion—but you’re not sure where you are supposed to be—just follow the passion to see where it takes you.”

Engaging Stakeholders

In order to translate your passion into action through your research, it’s important to start engaging stakeholders at the earliest stages of the process, Salas says.

For example, if you want policymakers to support legislation that could lessen the health impacts of climate change, talking to them before starting your study can help you frame what type of questions need to be answered to move the levers of actions.

These conversations can help narrow the focus of your work and inform the introduction and significance section of grant applications. You can also follow up with those policymakers once the study is published to talk through the findings and advocate for action.

In the same way, if your research is designed to inform disease care or patient education, have conversations with your clinical colleagues to understand what the current clinical practice is and what solutions could fit into existing workflows.

Public engagement is important as well. “Don’t just communicate your findings within academic journals,” Salas adds. “Share it with the public, too.”

While people may feel disconnected from stories about melting polar ice caps, connecting climate change to the severity of childhood asthma or the susceptibility of aging parents to summer heatwaves can make it more personal.

“When we reach out to the lay public or communicate with the policymakers themselves, they listen because this has not been standard practice.”

Media and Social Media

While Salas was initially reluctant to talk to the media about her work, it has proven to be a powerful way to get her message out.

“The reporters I’ve interacted with are looking for help in translating and understanding the significance of my work,” she says. “I think the bidirectional exchange is good—their questions give you an idea of what people want to know.”

She similarly went “kicking and screaming” into promoting her research on social media and other writing platforms.

“I’m not enormously active on Twitter, but I try to use it strategically to amplify the work of others that I think is important,” she says.

Salas has written several articles for the Massive Science website and would encourage researchers to take their training program, which emphasizes more lay-friendly science writing.

“It will help you learn how to write in a short, succinct way, which is often the opposite of how we write our science-dense manuscripts.”

About the Mass General Research Institute
Research at Massachusetts General Hospital is interwoven through more than 30 different departments, centers and institutes. Our research includes fundamental, lab-based science; clinical trials to test new drugs, devices and diagnostic tools; and community and population-based research to improve health outcomes across populations and eliminate disparities in care.
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