The construction of evidence-based local health policy through partnerships: Research infrastructure, process, and context in the Rotterdam 'Healthy in the City' programme.

Many authors in public health identify gaps between science, policy, and professional practice and seek to solve the problems by facilitating interactions between policymakers and researchers by creating partnership structures. Little empirical research indicates how these interactions contribute to use of research by policymakers, and under which conditions. We provide empirical information by analysing one project in an innovative partnership structure in the Netherlands. We show that although a partnership structure might facilitate interactions, it does not automatically render these interactions meaningful. To balance potential conflicts, careful issue management on a formal and informal level is needed. Partnership designs aiming to facilitate interactions between researchers and policymakers should pay attention to the role of knowledge brokers, expectations of science and policy actors, and the ways in which different perspectives can be helped to converge.