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.