Significant progress has been made in health research on developing and identifying treatments, practices, and policies with demonstrated efficacy or effectiveness;however, little progress has been made in translating these findings into real world settings where they can benefit patients and communities. The implementation of patient-centered, evidence-based interventions into practice has been low due in part to passive, ineffective dissemination of the findings to healthcare providers, policy makers, community leaders and consumers. The American Psychological Association proposes to develop a Best Practices Dissemination Network (BPDN) for the purpose of disseminating effective patient-centered healthcare interventions to improve the health of underserved health priority populations, e.g. racial/ethnic populations, men from health disparity populations. Dissemination campaigns will focus on tobacco dependence and obesity, two national health priority conditions that contribute significantly to chronic illnesses and mortality among health disparity populations.
Specific aims are to: 1) Establish and maintain an ongoing collaborative infrastructure network within the APA for the dissemination of patient-centered, evidence-based outcomes research focused on health priority needs of underserved populations, 2) Design and implement two dissemination campaigns each on tobacco dependence and obesity targeted to psychologists and other association members who (a) provide direct care and services, (b) are engaged in education, training and professional development and (c) are responsible for program and policy development;3) Assess the extent to which dissemination outreach strategies used, e.g., the use and sequencing of various social media versus traditional knowledge transfer mechanisms, impact receptivity and engagement and 4) Identify factors contributing to the intention of recipients to adopt and implement effective practices shared and the training and technical assistance needs they require to move towards uptake and use.
Health treatments and interventions that are effective and responsive to patient needs have been identified through comparative effectiveness and similar lines of research. It is important to public health to widely disseminate this information to accelerate its adoption into practice thus improving the health of individuals. It is also importan to ensure that the findings are targeted to benefit the needs of health priority populations.
