The Benefits of Cooperative Inquiry in Health Services Research: Lessons from an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Study

Health services research is underpinned by partnerships between researchers and health services. Partnership-based research is increasingly needed to deal with the uncertainty of global pandemics, climate change induced severe weather events, and other disruptions. To date there is very little data on what has happened to health services research during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper describes the establishment of an Australian multistate Decolonising Practice research project and charts its adaptation in the face of disruptions. The project used cooperative inquiry method, where partner health services contribute as coresearchers. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, data collection needed to be immediately paused, and when restrictions started to lift, all research plans had to be renegotiated with services. Adapting the research surfaced health service, university, and staffing considerations. Our experience suggests that cooperative inquiry was invaluable in successfully navigating this uncertainty and negotiating the continuance of the research. Flexible, participatory methods such as cooperative inquiry will continue to be vital for successful health services research predicated on partnerships between researchers and health services into the future. They are also crucial for understanding local context and health services priorities and ways of working, and for decolonising Indigenous health research.