The Equity Imperative: Transforming Research Coproduction for Impact Comment on "Research Coproduction: An Underused Pathway to Impact".

Coproduction is not a new idea in implementation research, health research, or research in general. There is substantial scholarship that establishes its importance and provides guidance and examples for adoption. Given this, why do editorials like Rycroft-Malone and colleagues' recent paper, "Research Coproduction: An Underused Pathway to Impact," continue to be published, and also, necessary? In this commentary, we discuss the importance of equity-not equality-as the underlying paradigm of coproduction research. We argue that it is the incomplete understanding and adoption of this equity paradigm by researchers and their institutions that inhibit coproduction from being fully realized and thus, impactful. We offer examples of what such a paradigm shift might look like, including futures thinking that yields difficult questions that must be addressed to dismantle systemic barriers to power redistribution.