Who is responsible for action?

I have recently been reading Steve Wing's commentary on research ethics in community-driven studies. (published in Environmental Health Perspectives v110, n5) He describes some of the serious challenges that researchers can face when engaging in research that supports communities over corporations, and the rewards that come from meeting those challenges. The choices he was forced to make were difficult, but it is not terribly difficult to recognize what the right choice was. You make a commitment to community members, you keep it. Even if it means some sacrifice, or a lot of sacrifice.

The environmental researcher's goal is to in Wing's words, "conduct studies that have the sensitivity to detect an effect if one exists." Then they work on dissemination. In academic journals, the media, and the community. This process of dissemination is in a sense action, action that may lead to policy change. This is strongly evidenced by the strong reaction of the pork industry, the pork-industry friendly government, and the university to the dissemination of findings from this research.

However, dissemination will get you only so far. Is it appropriate to leave policy action strategies to the community partner? If so, are they equally responsible to engage the researchers in the planning of action, as the researchers are responsible to engage community members in the research process?

Different partnerships do things differently, but if we were to think about best practices what would they be? So many partnerships get hung up at the action stage, and many do not achieve policy change, some because they never develop clarity about the policy change they would like to see. Many researchers are nervous about being seen as overtly political, because it will call their research into question. This is not without reason.

Much of what happens in partnership is not public. The best strategies leverage the diversity of roles and skills to create change. But if we are not clear, from the outset, who is responsible for analyzing policies, and for planning and initiating action, we may never achieve that clarity.