Building and sustaining effective academic partnerships: from patient-oriented research to system-level transformation

Health systems are under pressure to respond to complex challenges such as rising healthcare costs, widening health inequities, health workforce shortages, while balancing the growing expectation for high-quality person-centred care. While evidenced-based health research offers hope to meet these challenges, translating evidence into routine practice remains slow, inconsistent, and disconnected from the priorities of patients, communities, and clinicians. To address this research-to-practice gap, healthy and sustainable collaborative research partnerships may help to pave the way forward. This article argues how sustainable partnerships should be understood as necessary and strategic infrastructure, and highlights 8 key considerations for health system researchers seeking to enact sustainable health system transformations. These key considerations are as follows: 1. Collaborative Research Partnerships as a Dynamic System Rather than a Project Activity. 2. Integrating Multiple Forms of Knowledge. 3. Building Trust Through Long-Term Relationships. 4. Collaborative Governance Creates Shared Ownership. 5. Embedding Partnerships within Learning Health Systems. 6. Creating Conditions for Policy Influence. 7. Investing in Partnership Capacity. 8. Evaluating Partnerships Success Beyond Traditional Metrics. Finally, the authors conclude by describing how collaborative research partnerships can be re-imagined as enduring and necessary public infrastructure which supports high-performing evidence-informed healthcare systems.