RESUMEN
Implementation science (IS) has great potential to enhance the frequency, speed, and quality of the translation of evidence-based programs, policies, products, and guidelines into practice. Progress has been made, but with some notable exceptions, this promise has not been achieved for cancer prevention and control. We discuss five interrelated but conceptually distinct, crosscutting issues important to accelerate IS for cancer prevention and control and how our Colorado Implementation Science Center in Cancer Control (COISC3) addressed these issues. These needs and opportunities include more fully addressing changing, multi-level context; guiding rapid, iterative adaptations; evaluating innovative approaches to engagement and health equity; greater attention to costs and economic issues; and sustainability. We summarize conceptual issues; evaluation needs and capacity building activities and then provide examples of how our IS center addressed these five needs for cancer prevention and control. We discuss changes made to address priorities of (i) guiding adaptations of implementation strategies to address changing context and (ii) working on issues identified and prioritized by our primary care partners rather than the research team. We conclude with discussion of lessons learned, limitations, and directions for future research and practice in IS to enhance cancer prevention and control as well as translational behavioral medicine more generally.
Implementation science (IS) has made advances in translating research to practice but has not achieved the initial promise for cancer prevention and control (CPC). We discuss five crosscutting issues to enhance CPC that implementation and behavioral science are well positioned to address. These include more fully addressing changing, multi-level context; guiding rapid, iterative program adaptations; innovative approaches to engagement and health equity; greater attention to costs and economic issues; and sustainability. We then detail changes made in our research approach from studying specific interventions and strategies from the research literature to working on issues identified and prioritized by our primary care partners. In summary, progress in achieving lasting equitable improvements in health and healthcare will be greatly aided by use of flexible, accessible conceptual models, and approaches that help guide collaborators to design and adapt programs. We conclude with discussion of lessons learned, limitations, and directions for future research and practice of translational behavioral medicine.
