Around the EQUATOR with clinician-scientists transdisciplinary aging research (Clin-STAR) principles: Implementation science challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The Institute of Medicine and the National Institute on Aging increasingly understand that knowledge alone is necessary but insufficient to improve healthcare outcomes. Adapting the behaviors of clinicians, patients, and stakeholders to new standards of evidence-based clinical practice is often significantly delayed. In response, over the past twenty years, Implementation Science has developed as the study of methods and strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practice into regular use by practitioners and policymakers. One important advance in Implementation Science research was the development of Standards for Reporting Implementation Studies (StaRI), which provided a 27-item checklist for researchers to consistently report essential elements of the implementation and intervention strategies. Using StaRI as a framework, this review discusses specific Implementation Science challenges for research with older adults, provides solutions for those obstacles, and opportunities to improve the value of this evolving approach to reduce the knowledge translation losses that exist between published research and clinical practice.

Keywords: geriatrics; implementation science; knowledge translation; reporting standards.

Figure 1

Framework for Enhancing the Value of Dissemination and Implementation Research developed by National Institute of Health Work Group

Figure 2

Investigators utilizing Implementation Science in older adults with complex disease co-morbidities frequently encounter barriers at multiple levels which require attention during the design, conduct, interpretation, and reporting of research.