Barriers and opportunities faced by public health practitioners in using public health guidance on COVID-19: a knowledge translation exercise for the eCOVID-19 RecMap.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the scientific community to collaborate in an unprecedented way, with the rapid and urgent generation and translation of new knowledge about the disease and its causative agent. Iteratively, and at different levels of government and globally, population-level guidance was created and updated, resulting in the need for a living catalog of guidelines, the eCOVID-19 Recommendations Map and Gateway to Contextualization (RecMap). This article focuses on the approach that was used to analyze barriers and opportunities associated with using the RecMap in public health in Canada. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: A mixed qualitative and quantitative approach data were used to inform this knowledge mobilization project and inform feedback on implementation of the eCOVID-19 RecMap. This approach involved surveying 110 attendees from a public health webinar. Following this webinar, an evidence brief and series of case studies were created and disseminated to 24 Canadian public health practitioners who attended a virtual workshop. This workshop identified barriers and opportunities to improve RecMap use. RESULTS: This study helped to shed light on the needs that public health practitioners have when finding, using, and disseminating public health guidelines. Through the workshop that was conducted, opportunities for public health guidelines can be categorized into 4 categories: 1) information access, 2) awareness, 3) public health development, and 4) usability. Barriers that were identified can also be categorized into 4 categories: 1) usability, 2) information maintenance, 3) public health guidance, 4) awareness. CONCLUSION: This work will help to inform the development and organization of future public health guidelines, and the needs that public health practitioners have when engaging with them.

Barriers and facilitators to buprenorphine use for opioid agonist treatment: protocol for a scoping review.

INTRODUCTION: In the context of the opioid crisis in North America, the benefits of evidence-based opioid agonist treatments such as buprenorphine/naloxone have not been optimised due to low uptake. Numerous factors contribute to the underuse of buprenorphine, and theory-informed approaches to identify and address implementation barriers and facilitators are needed. This scoping review aims to characterise the barriers and facilitators at the patient, healthcare professional, organisation and system level according to the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF), and identify gaps to inform practice and policy. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We will conduct a scoping review using established methods and follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews. We will identify English and French-language peer-reviewed literature by searching five electronic bibliographic databases (MEDLINE, Embase, PsychINFO, CINAHL, and SocINDEX), from inception and use Google, websites of key organisations, and two or more custom search engines to identify relevant grey literature. Eligible records will be quantitative or qualitative studies that examine barriers and facilitators to buprenorphine use at the patient, healthcare professional, organisation and system level, and involve participants with diagnosis of opioid use disorder or professionals involved in their care. Two reviewers will be involved in independently screening, reviewing and charting the data and calibration exercises will be conducted at each stage. We will conduct descriptive analysis for the charted data, and deductively code barriers and facilitators using the TDF. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: As a scoping review of the literature, this study does not require ethics approval. Our dissemination strategy will focus on developing tailored activities to meet the needs of diverse knowledge user audiences. Barriers and facilitators mapped to the TDF can be linked to evidence-based strategies for change to improve buprenorphine use and access, and enable practice to reduce opioid-related harms.

A Review of Implementation Outcome Measures of School-Based Physical Activity Interventions.

BACKGROUND: Measuring the implementation of school-based physical activity (PA) interventions is an important prerequisite in assessing their impact. Prior to conducting a study to assess the implementation of the daily physical activity (DPA) policy in Ontario, Canada, a literature review was conducted to identify existing survey instruments to measure 5 implementation outcomes: adoption, fidelity, implementation cost, reach, and sustainability. METHODS: A search for survey instruments to assess these implementation outcomes at the teacher and school administrator levels was conducted in 7 bibliographic databases, as well as the gray literature. Each survey instrument was coded as assessing 1 of the 5 implementation outcomes if it included at least 1 item measuring the construct. RESULTS: Twenty-three survey instruments were identified. None of the instruments were specifically developed to measure the implementation outcomes. Fidelity was the most common implementation outcome measured, followed by adoption. The least common implementation outcome measured was sustainability. Thirty-five percent of survey instruments assessed were previously tested for validity and 26% were previously tested for reliability. CONCLUSIONS: Based on this review, a gap in available instruments to measure implementation outcomes of school-based PA programs was identified. An adapted theoretical framework, presented here, has potential application in future implementation studies.