Learning Objectives
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
- Describe how implementation research differs from clinical research.
- Describe at least two dissemination and implementation frameworks and two implementation strategies.
- Understand how to apply an implementation framework when designing community-engaged research.
Key Points
- Engage all stakeholders as early as possible in planning research that will be potentially implemented in practice.
- Tailor your implementation frameworks to the goals and needs of the community/health setting where program implementation will occur.
- Regularly monitor the implementation process to identify facilitators and barriers and provide suggestions for potential solutions.
On average, it takes 17 years for evidence-based interventions to translate into practice and benefit the public. 1 Even when the interventions are shown to be highly effective, the impact depends on whether and how the intervention is implemented in real-world settings. Implementation science helps translate research into practice and
studies methods to adopt and integrate evidence-based practices into public health settings to improve population health outcomes. Public Health implementation projects help clinical and community health settings to integrate new evidence-based approaches (e.g., intervention programs for chronic disease prevention, a new cancer screening checklist, or a new prescription that has proven effective for a specific condition) into their routine health care.
In this module, we will distinguish dissemination and implementation (D&I) research and clinical research. We will then describe what dissemination means and introduce two popular D&I frameworks and provide examples of how they are used in public health research. Finally, recommendations for conducting community-engaged implementation research will be presented.