Optimizing Evidence-Based Practice Implementation for Clinical Impact: The IMPACT Center – Exploratory Project 3

Abstract:

The 2015 NIMH strategic plan calls for strengthening the public health impact of research by improving the implementation and sustainability of evidence-based practices (EBPs). Three gaps currently exist that hinder implementation science’s impact: 1) guidance is needed to prioritize potential determinants to target; 2) precise methods are needed to identify how an implementation strategy operates and for matching strategies to determinants; 3) more economical and efficient approaches are needed for generating new knowledge.

The RAPID Center proposes to test new methods for optimizing implementation strategy through a staged approach for moving from determinant prioritization to strategy testing in real world settings. The Center builds on Agile Science, and approach for efficient evidence accumulation and will develop and adapt methods to move through a staged approach to (I) Prioritize Determinants, (II) Identify Strategy-Mechanism Pairings, (III) Deploy & Test Strategies.

The Center proposes four aims: Aim 1: Develop a staged approach to optimizing implementation strategies that leverages Agile Science and includes multidisciplinary rapid methods to test strategies’ causal pathways and effects in analogue and in situ. Aim 2: Test the impact of both forward and backward movement across the stages of optimizing implementation strategies with three exploratory studies. Aim 3: Support pilot testing of this staged approach to rapidly produce generalizable, practical knowledge. Aim 4: Contribute to the professional and scientific development of junior implementation researchers.

The Center will be supported by an Administrative Core and a Methods Core and includes three R34-like projects to test the Center’s staged approach and methods, as well as pilot funding and training opportunities for researchers across various career stages. The expected outcome is an evolving, open-source, database of methods and guidelines for our staged approach and evidence about which strategies work for which determinants that can be utilized by implementation practitioners and researchers.