Table 1 Academic Collaborative Centres

These centres have been funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) since 2005. They are long-term partnerships between community health services, researchers and policymakers, to bring these practices closer together. The main purpose is to direct research activities towards grassroots level problems, and to implement the outcomes in practice. Within these ACCs (health care) issues are mainly addressed at the local level, instead of a national level. This means that problems felt by the practitioners are addressed and solved together with scientists and other professionals, and then implemented in practice. The experiential knowledge of the practitioners plays a fundamental role within these ACCs, and success of the ACC is not only measured in scientific terms, but in tenns of the value of its practical outcomes.