Straw into Gold: Lessons Learned (and Still Being Learned) at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.

What lessons have we learned at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) about knowledge translation (KT) over the past 20 years, and what is our vision for the future? How does that KT interrelate with our other activities - research and the Population Health Data Repository? Who first noticed that "there's gold in them thar hills," and what did they do about it? How did we weave administrative database "straw" into gold, how have we panned for gold and how do we look for the pot of gold in the future? This paper describes how MCHP began with an integrated KT research relationship with government, and through The Need to Know Team, extended KT to regional health authority planners. It describes the various push-pull KT mechanisms that MCHP has used, including dissemination of research to planners through interactive workshops, and to other researchers through Web-based resources.