Implementation Science Resources for the Health Sciences: Home

This resource, Implementation Science at a Glance, is intended to help practitioners and policy makers gain familiarity with the building blocks of implementation science. Developed by our team and informed by our ongoing collaborations with practitioners and policy makers, Implementation Science at a Glance introduces core implementation science concepts, tools, and resources.

This study examined how health services research connects with practice and policy, first by investigating whether successful research projects continued in their test settings and
engendered replication and then by examining whether a coherent body of research helped shape public policy. Chronic heart failure (CHF) was studied because randomized, controlled trials of posthospital CHF disease management have repeatedly demonstrated patient benefits and reduced costs, yet this practice has not become standard in the United States

Society invests billions of dollars in the development of new drugs and technologies but comparatively little in the fidelity of health care, that is, improving systems to ensure the delivery of care to all patients in need. Using mathematical arguments and a nomogram, we demonstrate that technological advances must yield dramatic, often unrealistic increases in efficacy to do more good than could be accomplished by improving fidelity. In 2 examples (the development of anti-platelet agents and statins), we show that enhanced efficacy failed to achieve the health gains that would have occurred by delivering older agents to all eligible patients.

What exactly is translational research? For many, the term refers to the “bench-to-bedside” enterprise of harnessing knowledge from basic sciences to produce new drugs, devices, and treatment options for patients. For this area of research—the interface between basic science and clinical medicine—the end point is the production of a promising new treatment that can be used clinically or commercialized (“brought to market”).

This article summarizes an extensive literature review addressing the question, How can we spread and sustain innovations in health service delivery and organization? It considers both content (defining and measuring the diffusion of innovation in organizations) and process (reviewing the literature in a systematic and reproducible way).

Implementation research is a growing but not well understood field of health research that can contribute to more effective public health and clinical policies and programmes.This article provides a broad definition of implementation research and outlines key principles for how to do it

This commentary introduced the journal Implementation Science and includes definitions and a brief history of the field.

This review defines implementation science, distinguishes it from interventional research, explains the importance of frameworks, theories, and models, and reviews study designs used in implementation science research studies.

This teaching tool simply describes implementation science.

This teaching tool helps you place your research questions on the “implementation science subway line.”

This review acknowledges that there are many frameworks, theories, and models (FTMs) used in implementation science and establishes a three-part taxonomy of these FTMs: process models, determinant frameworks, and evaluation models.

This paper introduced what is now one of the most popular frameworks in implementation science: CFIR (pronounced “SEE-fur”), the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research.

This paper discusses the utility of frameworks, theories, and models (FTMs) in implementation science and offers an inventory of FTMs. Consider reading this paper after the Per Nilsen paper (above)

This paper provides an update to the literature on the current inventory of FTMs. (subscription access article)