practiceinformed

Practiceinformed is an approach that emphasizes integrating practical experience and front-line insights into decision making across policy, program design, and research. It seeks to ground planning in the realities of how services are delivered, what communities can feasibly adopt, and what outcomes matter in everyday practice.

As a concept, practiceinformed sits alongside evidence-based and practice-based perspectives. It does not replace empirical research or guidelines; rather it complements them by ensuring that implementation considerations, ethical concerns, and context-specific constraints shape interventions from the start.

Methods used in practiceinformed work include co-design with practitioners, advisory boards, reflective practice, rapid-cycle feedback, and the collection of practice-based evidence such as case narratives and field notes. Implementation science and knowledge translation frameworks are often employed to systematize the integration of practical knowledge with formal evidence.

Applications span health care, social services, education, public policy, and community development. Benefits include increased relevance, feasibility, and uptake, while challenges include potential bias, uneven quality of practitioner input, and the need to balance experiential knowledge with rigorous evidence and equity considerations. The terminology and emphasis of practiceinformed work vary by field, and proponents advocate for clear standards to assess the contribution of practice-derived knowledge.