Diving into Dissemination and Implementation Research

In studying dissemination and implementation, frameworks are important to understanding the science. Initially, the frameworks were difficult because I have a public health background. Public health has a history of using implementation methods, however, the new, developing science of dissemination and implementation has developed its own frameworks and models. My previous background was getting in the way of integrating the new knowledge of the recent D&I research. Once I dug deeper, I realized I needed to look at both the success of the intervention as well as the success of the implementation. It was a huge shift that now seems obvious and very helpful.

I’ve heard a lot about the RE-AIM framework throughout my career, but it makes a lot more sense now that I’ve developed a project with my own framework (Glasgow et al., 2019). Recently, I went to a conference where multiple presenters had used RE-AIM. The way they were using Reach and Effectiveness from RE-AIM seemed well thought out and effective. Before this class I wouldn’t have appreciated their project designs as much. The importance of reach — finding more people and offering treatment is different from effectiveness. With effectiveness we’re interested if the intervention worked, but maybe not as much effort into finding more participants. Two of the authors emphasized reach when doing tobacco cessation work, which is different from most interventions that prioritize cessation. Their thought was that it takes most people many quit attempts to finally succeed…