Policy Communication Toolkit

This Policy Communication Toolkit is a resource to bridge the gap that often lies between research and policy. It consolidates tools, materials, and approaches PRB has developed and refined over 30 years of training researchers to communicate to policy audiences. Through this toolkit, users can build skills to bridge this gap, with the goal of increasing the use of evidence in policy and decisionmaking.

Research often has profound implications for policy, but without effective communication between researchers and policy audiences, the significance of research findings may be lost. This training toolkit includes all the materials PRB uses to train family planning, reproductive health, and population researchers, experts, and advocates to:

• Understand the process by which research informs the policy environment.
• Identify key policy audiences.
• Identify and communicate the policy implications of research.
• Communicate messages through a variety of platforms, including policy briefs, oral presentations, data visualizations, social media, and more.

Modules: 

• Module 1: From Research to Policy
• Module 2: Strategic Communication
• Module 3: Writing for Policy Audiences
• Module 4: Creating Policy Presentations
• Module 5: Negotiations & Accountability
• Module 6: Communicating Research Through Social Media
• Module 7: Data Visualization
• Module 8: Working With the Media 

Each module contains learning objectives, instructional presentations, individual and group exercises, and suggested homework/reading. Each session includes guidance for facilitators, such as presentation speaker notes, instructions for exercises, and guidelines for discussion. The content included in the first two modules provide the conceptual underpinning for how to communicate data and evidence to policy audiences. The subsequent modules focus on building those communication skills for a certain medium.

The above description is taken from the PRB abstract of the toolkit.