When Diane and I dreamed up The CAPTURE Project in the fall of 2008, we very specifically stated that we would do everything in our power to take advantage of the existing resources in Canada and “not reinvent the wheel”. Of course, everybody who starts a new project says that – who would want to reinvent the wheel? – but it can be amazingly difficult philosophy to live by.
Short term funding like the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer’s support of The CAPTURE Project can encourage a build-it-again or pilot project mentality because deliverables that involve “creation” are easily measured and the development of those deliverables is quicker when one doesn’t have to consider the needs of other stakeholders. Successful partnering around existing resources is less sexy – “hurray, we didn’t build anything and it took much longer than we expected!”
One of the wonderful aspects of not reinventing wheels is that one is able to avoid the endless stakeholder engagement processes that can go into creating the wheels in the first place. There is no doubt that stakeholder engagement is important–we have spent a good portion of the last year engaging our stakeholder communities (see here and here and here and here and here)– but we are very reticent to strike committees whose work might span the next 18 months when our current funding ends in 27 months.
Although, partnering can have its challenges, there is little doubt that the benefits outweigh the costs. When one trusts the quality of the existing resources and trusts the process that went into their creation, better ideas are created and dramatic leaps in progress can be made with minimal effort.
Which brings me to the main point of this article: The CAPTURE Project very much recognizes that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Part of our recent work has been dedicated to creating a database structure that defines the concept of “public health intervention”. Having been involved, in various capacities, with the Canadian Best Practices Portal for the last 4 years, I was aware of the work that went into their definition of an “intervention”. One quick email to Nina Jehta was all it took for them to shoot us the form that they use to classify the interventions that end up on the portal. Bingo: instant head start and one year of committee work saved.
Another conversation with John Garcia at Cancer Care Ontario reminded us of the incredible work done in developing the Canadian Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention initiatives database (CHPCDP). Getting information for this initiative was a little more challenging (a couple of people had retired and one had moved to the UK) but, with John’s assistance, we were able to track down a veritable horde of incredibly useful materials that will not only add interesting dimensions to our intervention data structure but it will also shave months of work from our work plan. CHPCDP researchers (Roy West, Alison C. Edwards and E. Ann Ryan) had already done some of the practitioner engagement work (a.k.a. user testing) that we were planning to do and had documented this work very thoroughly. This fortuitous find will literally save tens of thousands taxpayer dollars.
There are many other giants that deserve recognition as being foundational to the creation of The CAPTURE Project and I look forward to exploring their contributions in future blog posts.
