Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Using intermediaries to
communicate with DFID
Kate Hawkins
Strengthening research to policy
and practice interface
Liverpool May 2009

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Outline of the presentation
• About us
• Why communicate with DFID?
• Policy context
• Work with intermediaries
• Lessons learned

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
About us
• Realising Rights has prioritised neglected
or “challenging” areas of sexual and
reproductive health and rights
• Decentralised communications
• Parliamentarians and the media (MTR civil
servants)
• Role of IDS
• Approach to communications

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Why communicate with DFID?
• DFID ask us to supply research and evidence of
impact
• Accountability
• Assumption that evidence used by DFID at
international and national level – supportive of
ongoing communications work within the
Consortium
• Commitment to supporting DFID policy making with
relevant research

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Policy context
• Messy and grubby
• Fast paced
• Broad and disparate evidence based
(digestibility)
• Multiple positions within and outside
• Multiple processes underway at various levels
• Political decision making
• Desire for practical solutions
• We are a small fish in a large pond

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Work with intermediaries
• To amplify voice, the ensure information
packaged appropriately, to create multiple
pathways to our target audience, to try
and create consistency in messaging from
a variety of sources, to create legitimacy,
to ensure legacy, to bring in skills we do
not possess, to build feedback loops, to
refine communications approaches.
• Knowledge intermediaries and policy
networks

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Knowledge intermediaries
• Research for Development (uploading to site)
• IDS Knowledge Services (co-creation of online,
email and printed products, joint dissemination,
joint planning and information sharing, learning
from our interventions and refining approaches)

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Policy networks
• UK Network on Sexual and Reproductive
Health and Rights (contributing evidence
for advocacy, networking and partnership,
sharing intelligence, leadership, co-
convening spaces for engagement)
• All Party Parliamentary Group on
Population, Development and
Reproductive Health (briefing
parliamentarians, help inform agendas,
providing evidence to support positions)

Improving sexual and reproductive health in poor and vulnerable populations
Lessons
• Agenda setting – conceptual influence
• Time intensive and translation heavy
• Transnational influence
• Legacy
• Understanding the potential for negative
unintended consequences
• Negotiating uncertainty
• Intellectual property and the use of evidence
• Complexity and the difficulty of attributing impact