Using Participatory Implementation Science to Advance Health Equity.

Participatory approaches to implementation science (IS) offer an inclusive, collaborative, and iterative perspective on implementing and sustaining evidence-based interventions (EBIs) to advance health equity. This review provides guidance on the principles and practice of participatory IS, which enables academic researchers, community members, implementers, and other actors to collaboratively integrate practice-, community-, and research-based evidence into public health and health care services. With a foundational focus on supporting academics in coproducing knowledge and action, participatory IS seeks to improve health, reduce inequity, and create transformational change. The three main sections of this review provide (a) a rationale for participatory approaches to research in implementation science, (b) a framework for integrating participatory approaches in research utilizing IS theory and methods, and (c) critical considerations for optimizing the practice and impact of participatory IS. Ultimately, participatory approaches can move IS activities beyond efforts to make EBIs work within harmful systems toward transformative solutions that reshape these systems to center equity. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 45 is April 2024. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Protocol for a scoping review of health equity frameworks and models applied in empirical studies of chronic disease prevention and control.

BACKGROUND: Chronic diseases, such as cancers and cardiovascular diseases, present the greatest burden of morbidity and mortality worldwide. This burden disproportionately affects historically marginalized populations. Health equity is rapidly gaining increased attention in public health, health services, and implementation research, though many health inequities persist. Health equity frameworks and models (FM) have been called upon to guide equity-focused chronic disease and implementation research. However, there is no clear synthesis of the health equity FM used in chronic disease research or how these are applied in empirical studies. This scoping review seeks to fill this gap by identifying and characterizing health equity FM applied in empirical studies along the chronic disease prevention and control continuum, describing how these FM are used, and exploring potential applications to the field of implementation science. METHODS: We follow established guidance for conducting scoping reviews, which includes six stages: (1) identify the research question; (2) identify relevant studies; (3) select studies for inclusion; (4) data extraction; (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results; and (6) consultation. This protocol presents the iterative, collaborative approach taken to conceptualize this study and develop the search strategy. We describe the criteria for inclusion in this review, methods for conducting two phases of screening (title and abstract, full text), data extraction procedures, and quality assurance approaches taken throughout the project. DISCUSSION: The findings from this review will inform health-equity focused chronic disease prevention and control research. FM identified through this review will be added to an existing website summarizing dissemination and implementation science frameworks, and we will offer case examples and recommendations for utilizing a health equity FM in empirical studies. Our search strategy and review methodology may serve as an example for scholars seeking to conduct reviews of health equity FM in other health disciplines. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: Open Science Framework Registration https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SFVE6.

High Impact for Whom? A Qualitative Analysis of Organization Concerns About the Transition to High-Impact Prevention Policy.

HIV represents a significant health burden in the United States. In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped recommending many once-promoted interventions as part of a shift from one HIV intervention policy, Diffusion of Effective Behavioral Interventions (DEBI), to another, High Impact Prevention (HIP). Twenty-nine staff members from 10 organizations were interviewed to explore how organizations reacted to this shift. Three major themes emerged: (1) Personal experience, community assessment, and epidemiological evidence influenced organizations' perceptions of efficacy and preference for earlier interventions. (2) Organizations were concerned that HIP interventions were not a good fit for their priority populations. (3) Organizations were frustrated with the top-down approach by the CDC prioritizing HIP interventions over earlier interventions. These results indicate that organizations continue to see value in and provide DEBI interventions. In addition, a more participatory process incorporating qualitative evidence and organizations' experiences may be necessary to achieve widespread de-implementation of DEBI interventions.

Situating implementation science (IS) in res(IS)tance: a conceptual frame toward the integration of scholarship from the black radical tradition.

This manuscript undertakes a disciplinary self-critique of the field of implementation science, a field which attempts to bridge the gap between evidence-based interventions and their practical application. Despite the heightened emphasis on health equity and racial disparities, the field's current discourse is limited by key epistemic shortcomings. First, even though prevalence of implementation gaps between racialized groups in the United States necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the systems perpetuating these disparities, the field does not operate with a general explanation for disparities not as a failure of systems, but a system historically and structural designed to produce disparities. Second, the field has attempted to address disparities without adequate dialog with a broad tradition of anti-racist and anti-colonial sociology, history and epistemology, and therefore risks a decontextualized analysis of disparities and under-informed approaches to achieving equity. Fortunately, scholarship from the Black radical tradition (BRT), such as the Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP), Critical Race Theory (CRT), and more broadly conceptual frameworks from post-modern, anti-colonial, Black feminist studies and social epistemology can offer to implementation science frameworks that center power dynamics and racialized oppression. This epistemic re-alignment of implementation research to "center at the margins" can enable the field of implementation science to more critically examine and dismantle systems that perpetuate racial inequalities in access to and utilization of health interventions. For example, normalization and dynamic fit, which are thought to be key mechanisms of implementation, are revealed in the light of this tradition of scholarship to be potentially problematic acquiescence to oppressive systems. Drawing from the concept of resistance anchored in the scholarship of the Black radical tradition as well as contemporary social epistemology such as the work of José Medina and Maria Fricker about epistemic justice, the authors further advance that implementation science could make more substantial contributions to the dismantling of racialized systems and actively work toward health justice through the transdisciplinary lens of resistance. This is a call to action for integrating implementation science with critical philosophical and theoretical perspectives rooted in Black studies and related insights, which have been acquired through the struggle for social justice, to inform the design of implementation strategies and research projects that improve health services and health outcomes for health disparity populations.