How to transfer public health research into practice

- Challenges in implementation research

This symposium is a part of Karolinska Institutet's "200 years" celebrations. It aims to contribute to the development of implementation research within public health in Sweden. Distinguished international and Swedish researchers will present and discuss some key issues:

- Challenges for public health implementation research
- Frameworks for public health implementation research
- The transferability of public health research findings into practice settings
- The need for a network for public health implementation researchers

Besides lectures, the symposium includes interactive sessions and short oral presentations.

Who can attend?

The symposium is open to researchers and stakeholders within the fields of implementation research and public health, primarily from Sweden but also from the Nordic region.

Where will it be held?

The symposium will take place in AFA Insurance's venue at Klara Södra kyrkogatan 18, Stockholm. See "Practical information" for more details.

Why this symposium?

Evidence-based public health, inspired by evidence-based medicine, has become an increasingly important concept, both in Sweden and internationally.

This concept can be described in two steps; first developing effective interventions or programmes with the aim to promote health; second, to implement the programmes into different practice settings by changing the routines of providers.

Implementation can be defined as a specific set of activities designed to put into practice an activity or programme of known dimensions. Implementation research is the study of methods to promote the uptake of research findings into routine practice.

In its early days, implementation was conceptualised as a rather passive and almost automatic process involving diffusion of information from research to practitioners. Over the past decades it has become clear that an active implementation process is required, in order to translate research into practice. However, knowledge regarding effective approaches for implementation of research interventions is sparse.


Today, public health faces a number of challenges in implementation research compared to the health care setting. This includes a more limited evidence base and the complexity of public health interventions, which often span multiple levels.

Variation between settings is a challenge to external validity and therefore makes it more difficult to transfer programmes from one context to another. This in turn leads to tension between customisation of an evidence-based programme on the one hand and fidelity to the original programmes components on the other.

In addition, context, i.e. society, organisations, economic conditions and information technology are continuously changing, and we must ask ourselves if “evidence-based public health” might be an illusion. How can we accomplish a reciprocal exchange of knowledge between research and practice in a fast changing world?

Another challenge for researchers as well as practitioners in public health is its multi-sectoral nature, which means that the benefits derived from investments made in one sector are often reaped by another, i.e. the health care sector.