Recommendation #6: Be a secret agent
Deprescribing is cohering as a professional identity. There are a number
of national and regional networks focused on this topic, and the first
international conference devoted to the topic was successfully convened
in September 2022. While these are positive developments, they come with
a danger of becoming insular. We must resist this temptation. Promoting
appropriate deprescribing is too large a task for deprescribing-focused
researchers and program leaders to take on alone, and the most impactful
changes will come by working with partners in a wide variety of research
fields and in health systems, guidelines, and governments. Our task is
to engage closely with these partners, understand their needs and
perspectives, and to bubble up opportunities to promote deprescribing
research within those environments aligned with the principles of
strategic science.10 Secret agents covertly
infiltrate; we can display our interests more openly but the principles
of building relationships, gaining trust, understanding people’s
interests, and findings ways to align with those interests are
analogous.