Humanitarian crisis require a responsive and agile response. The number of professional and volunteer organization involved in the response to humanitarian disasters has increased over the past year, making coordination more important than ever before. This paper discusses the main issues of Humanitarian Disaster Management (HDM) coordination and the different modes applied on the field. We arg...

In this commentary, the idea of closing the gap between knowing and doing through closing the gap between academics and practitioners is explored. The two communities approach to knowledge production and use, has predominated within healthcare, resulting in a separation between the worlds of research and practice, and, therefore, between its producers and users. Meaningful collaborations betwee...

The first paper [1] in this two-part miniseries on conceptual understanding discussed expert and novice conceptual knowledge, the multifaceted nature of conceptual understanding, and the cognitive skills essential for constructing it. This second article presents examples of instruments for the assessment and development of five facets of conceptual understanding that require competence in the ...

Despite widespread recognition of a research-practice gap in multiple service sectors, less is known about how pre-existing communication channels facilitate the flow of information between researchers and practitioners. In the current study, we applied an existing typology of brokerage developed by Gould and Fernandez (Sociol Methodol 19:89-126, 1989) to examine what types of brokerage facilit...

Health secretary Alan Johnson announced in March the identities of the first five academic health science centres in the UK, one of which is the result of a collaboration between Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. These centres are partnerships between world-class universities and leading NHS organisations, and this article examines the implications of their esta...