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Editorial
Building on what we know: moving beyond effectiveness to consider how to implement, sustain and spread successful health interventions
  1. Celia Laur1,2,
  2. Lauren Ball1,3,
  3. Heather Keller4,5 and
  4. Noah Ivers2,6
  1. 1 NNEdPro Global Centre for Nutrition and Health, St John’s Innovation Centre, Cambridge, UK
  2. 2 Women's College Research Institute, Women's College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  3. 3 Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  4. 4 Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
  5. 5 Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
  6. 6 Department of Family and Community Medicine and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  1. Correspondence to Dr Celia Laur, NNEdPro Global Centre for Nutrition and Health, St John’s Innovation Centre, Cambridge, UK; c.laur{at}nnedpro.org.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjnph-2020-000115

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    Health research needs to demonstrate impact. It is no longer sufficient to claim that a treatment or behavioural intervention is only ‘efficacious’. There is little sense in building evidence of efficacy without systematically figuring out how to ensure it works in the real world and ensuring it continues to work over time and across contexts. This editorial provides a brief introduction into why considering implementation, sustainability and scalability can help achieve impact in health research and encourages submission of articles to a Special Collection on Implementing Effective Interventions in Healthcare. Details for submission are included in Box 1.

    Box 1

    Special Collection: Implementing effective interventions in healthcare

    To have an impact on individual and population health, we need to consider how to implement effective interventions and practice changes. This collection encourages submission of articles about how to effectively change practice with a focus on prevention across all areas of health. Articles can be from any settings (ie, community, primary care, and hospital) and any health-related topic area, particularly nutrition and physical activity, as long as there is a focus on prevention and changing practice.

    Types of articles that are encouraged include:

    • Knowledge translation studies.

    • Implementation and quality improvement initiatives.

    • Interventions applied at scale (throughout a country, region, etc).

    • Studies where implementation was not successful (lessons learnt should be discussed).

    • Pilot projects will only be considered if they have given consideration to the feasibility of real-world implementation.

    • Theory-based interventions, with particular emphasis on behaviour change.

    • All study designs, including quantitative, qualitative and mixed method.

    Terminology used to describe the process of putting evidence into practice varies across disciplines and over time.1 Knowledge Translation (KT) is a commonly used umbrella term that encompasses both the science of how to implement a new intervention, building on evidence from previous implementation research (implementation science), and the practice of putting interventions …

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