Education & Training Resources

Implementation Science Exchange

If you’re interested in learning more about Implementation Science research methods, the Implementation Science Exchange includes narrated PowerPoint presentations by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty and other colleagues that provide brief overviews of various research methods. Current tutorial topics include qualitative methods, qualitative comparative analysis and systems science.

Training Opportunities

Are you interested in the intersection of cancer prevention & control and implementation research? If so, the Mentored Training for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer (MT-DIRC) program may be of interest to you. Applications for the next cohort will be available Fall 2016 with an application deadline in early 2017.

The NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) offers a 5-day training (Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health) that provides participants with a thorough grounding in conducting dissemination and implementation research. These institutes have been offered yearly since 2011. To learn more about previous institutes and to find information for future programs, check out the Training section of the OBSSR Dissemination and Implementation activities.

The KT Clearinghouse, a website funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research, offers various educational programs for a variety of audiences through its network of Canadian experts in knowledge translation, KT Canada. Explore their education programs.

Fundamentals of Implementation Research is an online module developed by the MEASURE Evaluation M&E Learning Center that can be completed in approximately 2-3 hours. It is an introduction to the language, concepts, tools and strategies used in implementation research. The information presented in the module is intended to be practical and useful for researchers and program implementers as an orientation.

Conferences

The 9th Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health will be held December 14-15, 2016 in Washington, DC. The conference, co-hosted by the National Institutes of Health and AcademyHealth, is a forum for discussing the science of dissemination and implementation.

The Global Implementation Conference is a forum for discussing real-world impacts of implementation, as well as what’s needed to produce socially significant results. Keynote speakers included Dr. Lisa Saldana and Dr. Bryan Weiner. Held in Dublin, Ireland on May 26-28, 2015. Abstracts and slides are available in the conference program.

The next Global Implementation Conference will be held June 19-21, 2017 in Toronto, Canada.

The Society for Implementation Research Collaboration 3rd Biennial meeting is dedicated to facilitating communication and collaboration between implementation research teams, researchers and community providers. Held in Seattle, WA on September 24-26, 2015.

Policy Resources

Understanding Evidence-Based Public Health Policy- a useful article by Ross Brownson, Jamie Chriqui and Katherine Stamatakis that emphasizes the importance of evidence-based public health policy and the gap that exists between what we know works and what policies are actually enacted.

The Community Tool Box is a free resource intended for those working to build healthier communities and bring about positive social change. The Tool Box has been under continuous development since 1994 and is available in English, Spanish and Arabic. It is a public service of the Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas.

Are you unsure of when it’s best to disseminate evidence to policymakers? AcademyHealth has developed Informing with Evidence: When to Disseminate during the Federal Budget Cycle, a timeline that depicts key steps in the US federal budget and appropriations process, as well as key entry points for researchers and advocates to educate policymakers.

Practice Resources

The Active Implementation Hub is a free, online learning environment for use by any stakeholder—practitioners, educators, coaches, trainers and purveyors—involved in active implementation and scaling up of programs or innovations. The site is sponsored by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The goal of the site is to increase the knowledge and improve the performance of anyone engaged in actively implementing a program or practice.

Creating Dissemination Plans

The Advances in Patient Safety: Dissemination Planning Tool is a tool developed to help researchers evaluate their research, and if the research is determined to have ‘real world’ impact, then assist in the development of appropriate dissemination plans. Creation and testing of the tool is described in Development of a Planning Tool to Guide Research Dissemination.

The CARE: Beyond Scientific Publication – Strategies for Disseminating Research Findings is a resource that provides key strategies for disseminating research findings to relevant communities, agencies, health departments, researchers, policy makers and health advocacy groups. The resource was created by the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation’s Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE).

Methods & Tools

The NCCMT Registry of Methods and Tools is a searchable registry of methods and tools relevant to public health that support the planning, doing and evaluating of public health policies and practices across all types of knowledge translation activities.

The QUERI Quality Improvement (QI) Methods is a section of the QUERI website that includes a Quality Improvement Methods Section Tool, a compilation of widely used QI Methods, an example of how QI methods can be used in a QUERI project, and a QI Methods Handbook.

Sources of Evidence

A compilation of sources of evidence can be found at the NC TraCS Institute’s Implementation Science Exchange.

Research Resources

Implementation Science Exchange

The field of Implementation Science is rapidly growing. The North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute, the home of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) at The University of North Carolina, has developed a web-based exchange with resources and tools to help guide your Implementation Science research agenda. Many proposals now require a dissemination or implementation component, even if it is not the primary intent of the project. The Implementation Science Exchange has sample grant proposals, a list of journals most likely to publish your study results and tutorials related to new research methods. Especially helpful for grant submissions and publications are the implementation tools and references for implementation theories and frameworks. Please visit the ImpSciX to learn more about what the site has to offer.

Research on Implementation

The TDR Implementation Research Toolkit is a product of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases designed to help people learn a standard process that would lead to results that can be compared across regions and countries; identify system bottlenecks and the stakeholders who need to be involved; formulate appropriate research questions; conduct research; and develop plans for implementing study results.

The QUERI Implementation Guide introduces the reader to approaches to conduct research on implementation. Studying how implementation is done can lead to insights into improving implementation practice.