Translating public health research into public health practice: outcomes and characteristics of successful collaborations.

For over five years we have been involved in a series of collaborations between academic public health and state and local public health organizations. This article briefly describes the outcomes produced and under development by these collaborations and delineates and discusses some characteristics we now hypothesize will predict successful academic/practice collaboration. These collaborative projects with public health organizations in Alabama, Indiana, and New Mexico have produced outcomes that influenced the organization of the agencies and the allocation of resources within the agencies. The collaborations also have contributed to the body of literature concerning management processes in public health agencies and influenced the teaching of strategic management to students of health services. Our experiences and interactions led to the identification of 10 characteristics we believe predict successful academic and practice collaborations, discussed in three groups as (1) characteristics of successful academic collaborators, (2) characteristics of successful collaborating public health organizations, and (3) characteristics of successful collaborative projects.