Regional Areas of Research Interest: Challenges, opportunities and next steps

The report identifies six priority actions to ensure that the evolving Areas of Research Interest landscape supports and enables meaningful knowledge exchange and decision making:

* ARI-aligned funding models: Developing “rapid” funding that matches policy timescales and enables non-academic institutions to lead grant applications.
* Evaluation frameworks: Creating clear definitions of impact that capture both process changes and substantive outcomes.
* Peer support network: Establishing ongoing convening opportunities for knowledge exchange, problem solving, and reducing duplication.
* Collective Theory of Change: Developing shared understanding of the purposes of and pathways to impact for ARIs.
* Integrative approaches to ARI: Testing community-engaged and collective models across multiple locations.
* Integration tools: Expanding databases, creating collaboration frameworks, and enabling thematic clustering.