Co-designing collaboration: Using a partnership framework for shared policymaking in geriatric networks

Abstract

Involving older people in policymaking is an emerging trend. In the literature no studies were found on the macro-level development of partnerships between older people and professionals in healthcare policy. The purpose of this article is to explore the potential of a partnership framework as part of action research (AR) for facilitating user involvement and collaborations in policymaking. We present a study in which older people became partners in eight regional geriatric research networks, as part of a national program to innovate elderly care. A partnership framework, consisting of conditions, actions, relations, and values, structured the AR study. In the study older people’s delegates and professionals co-designed this partnership framework by first separately deliberating in homogeneous meetings, followed by heterogeneous dialogue. In regional workshops this model was used to reflect on local partnership relations and to identify actions for implementation. Findings reveal that the partnership framework offered a structure to facilitate user involvement and the development of partnerships in the regional geriatric policy networks. We conclude that co-designing partnerships with the help of our framework is a useful approach to facilitate collaborative policymaking processes. Co-designing partnership may also be helpful in other AR studies.