A new article, published in Implementation Science Research and Practice, highlights recommendations to sustain current Implementation Science (IS) capacity building programs (ISCBPs) and includes novel and emerging IS competencies for the field.
The multi-method study, authored by Dr. Amy Huebschmann and colleagues, was supported by several members of the IS-2 program, including (a-z) Dr. Ross Brownson (IS-2 Co-director), Dr. Debra Haire-Joshu (IS-2 Co-director), Shelly Johnston (IS-2 Project coordinator), and Dr. Bethany Kwan (2020 Scholar).
In addition to capturing current characteristics of ISCBPs, the team identified novel IS competencies as compared to the current gold standard for IS competencies (Padek et al., 2015), by extracting IS competencies through a three-step process of a literature review as well as the above-noted survey of IS competencies used by current ISCBP programs (Padek et al., 2015).
“We used a consensus-building process with ISCBP leaders and other IS experts to expand existing IS competencies and identified eight important, novel IS competencies that broadly relate to promoting health equity and speeding the translation of research to practice.”
Huebschmann et al., (2022) IRP
In total, 118 IS researchers and/or ISCBP leaders completed an expert panel survey to rate each novel IS competency on importance to add to the current IS competency list (i.e., How important do you feel it is to add the following competency to the current IS competency list [Padek et al., 2015], from 1 “not at all important” to 5 “extremely important”). Participants were also asked to place each competency statement into the column that best expressed the skill level needed to address that competency. The columns were labeled “Beginner,” “Intermediate,” and “Advanced.”
Eight out of 10 novel competencies were rated as “very” (score = 4) or “extremely important” (score = 5) by more than half of the experts and were incorporated into the updated IS competency list. Two out of those eight competencies (25%) fell into the “Advanced” category, with the remaining competencies rated as “Beginner” (38%) and “Intermediate” (38%).
View the updated list of competencies (Table 6) and full article online.
This work was supported by the Colorado Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control (ISC3; National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Cancer Institute (NCI) award P50CA244688; Huebschmann, Rabin); Washington University ISC3 (NIH/NCI award P50CA244431; Haire-Joshu, Brownson); the NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) award R25DK123008; Johnston, Haire-Joshu, Brownson) and NIH/NIDDK award P30DK092950 (Haire-Joshu, Brownson); the Wellcome Trust (award reference 219425/Z/19/Z; Davis); the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) via the “Applied Research Collaboration South London” (NIHR ARC South London) at King’s College Hospital National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust, London, UK (Davis); the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) grant UL1 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the NIH award TR002535 (Kwan, McNeal); the Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences award from the NCATS of the NIH award UL1TR002345 (Geng, Sandler); the University of Colorado Adult and Child Center for Outcomes Research and Delivery Science (Huebschmann, Kwan, Rabin), the Washington University Institute for Public Health (Brownson, Geng), the Washington University Center for Dissemination and Implementation (Geng); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention award U48DP006395 (Haire-Joshu, Brownson); the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital (Brownson); UC San Diego ACTRI Dissemination and Implementation Science Center (Rabin). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent official views of the NIH or other funding agencies.