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Although communication is widely observed to be central to the implementation process, the field of implementation science has largely overlooked the details of how communication may best be utilized to facilitate implementation. This paper draws on relevant insights from Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations Theory, which laid the foundation for explicitly attending to the role of communication as a mechanism for implementation strategies to exert their effects. To offer empirically-derived and theory-informed recommendations regarding communication processes to support the effective introduction of new clinical practices. This investigation leverages data from 61 therapists poised to undergo implementation of measurement-based care (MBC) for depressed adults receiving psychotherapy in community mental health settings. Data were collected via focus groups across 12 sites. Themes emergent in the data analysis suggest five practices to facilitate effective communication in the introduction of new clinical practices like MBC: the communication of a clear rationale for the new practice; the provision of necessary procedural knowledge; communication about the change via multiple methods; sufficient lead time to prepare for the change; and the opportunity for bidirectional engagement. In addition to indicating several best practices to improve communication prior to implementation, our results suggest that the current conceptualization of implementation strategies may not yet be complete. Components and/or methods of effective communication about new practices should be included among the growing set of implementation strategies. Existing implementation strategies might also benefit from more temporal specificity, with more attention to the exploration and preparation phases. (Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02266134. Registered 12 October 2014.).There has been a great deal of attention recently to the study of implementation, or how something (e.g., a new clinical practice or initiative) is actually put into effect. Many studies have found a number of barriers to and facilitators of the implementation process. But despite this increased attention, the field of implementation science may not have paid enough attention to the role of communication. Although communication is generally acknowledged as important, precisely how it impacts implementation—and, importantly, the ways it might be improved—is typically unexplored. This study conducted focus groups with mental health therapists in 12 clinics which were about to implement a new clinical practice: measurement-based care for depressed adults receiving psychotherapy. What these therapists shared about their perspectives and experiences suggest that there are at least five ways to facilitate effective communication when introducing a new clinical practice: communicating a clear rationale for the new practice, providing necessary procedural knowledge, using multiple methods to communicate about the change, giving sufficient lead time to prepare for the change, and providing the opportunity for bidirectional engagement.

Implementation strategies are methods or techniques that can be used to enhance the adoption, implementation, scale-up, and sustainment of evidence-based cancer control practices into routine care. This chapter defines implementation strategies, presents several taxonomies of implementation strategies that can be used to address multilevel implementation barriers, describes guidelines for reporting and specifying implementation strategies to ensure the efficient generation of knowledge and the replication of effective strategies in research and practice, briefly overviews the state of evidence for strategies, and suggests ways in which they can be carefully developed and applied to address the needs of specific contexts. The chapter concludes by presenting several research priorities related to implementation strategies.

As the field of implementation science moves beyond studying barriers to and facilitators of implementation to the comparative effectiveness of different strategies, it is essential that we create a common taxonomy to define the strategies that we study. Similarly, we must clearly document the implementation strategies that are applied, the factors that influence their selection, and any adaptation of the strategy during the course of implementation and sustainment of the innovation being implemented. By incorporating this type of rigor into our work we will be able to not only advance the science of implementation but also our ability to place evidence-based innovations into the hands of practitioners in a timely and efficient manner.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) has been increasingly advocated and is gaining wider acceptance in social work. This signals a continuing reaffirmation of social work’s commitment to generating and maintaining a scientific knowledge base in general and, more specifically, to an expectation that social work be informed by, and based on, evidence from scientific research. Yet actual implementation of evidence-based programs, services, and practices remains a formidable challenge. In most areas of health and human services, evidence-based care comprises only a small fraction of all the care that is actually delivered. We have little if any data on the proportion of actual social work services that are evidence based. In response to the challenge of moving evidence-based practice from the research environment to real-world care, a growing literature addresses the science and practice of translation, and specifically the implementation of evidence-based practices. Translational science is a broad field that pertains to the progression from basic biological research to its application for public health benefit. Implementation research is a subset of translational research, although some literatures use these terms interchangeably. Literature on implementation reflects an early stage of science, for we have much to learn about the factors that enhance implementation, and even more to learn about actual strategies implementing evidence-based practices and the methodology for studying implementation processes. The literature discussed in this entry is drawn from a range of disciplines, because social work journals have published very few articles about implementation and because implementation itself is an inherently transdisciplinary topic.