An ongoing funding opportunity from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supporting dissemination and implementation research in health. The purpose of the funding opportunity is “to support studies that will identify, develop, and/or test strategies for overcoming barriers to the adoption, adaptation, integration, scale-up, and sustainability of evidence-based interventions, practices, programs, tools, treatments, guidelines, and policies.”
Posttrial sustainment and deimplementation of study interventions has been a focus of the NIH Collaboratory’s Implementation Science Core. In a recent article, investigators from 6 of the program’s completed pragmatic clinical trials summarized the posttrial interpretation of their trials’ results and considered the factors that influenced the sustainment or deimplementation of the studies’ interventions.
The article was published early this year in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Three lessons emerged from the review:
- Ineffective interventions may be sustained if they have other measured or perceived benefits.
- Effective interventions may not be sustained if they require significant resources.
- Alignment with policy incentives is essential for achieving sustainment and scale-up of effective interventions.
Read about the NIH funding opportunity for research that supports the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions.