Developing Implementation Science Capacity Within Health Departments Located in Ending the HIV Epidemic Priority Areas.

Abstract

Background: Embedding implementation science (IS) research into health departments can foster relevant and robust research that is responsive to health department needs. However, few health department evaluators have formal IS training. Building internal health department capacity to conduct rigorous evaluation has the potential to catalyze improvements in Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) service delivery.

Setting: In-person IS workshop for EHE evaluators held in Seattle, WA, May 2024.

Methods: We conducted a needs assessment with EHE jurisdictions to identify their capacity and expertise in IS, and desire for additional training. Based on this assessment, we developed a 2.5-day workshop to equip health department epidemiologists/data managers/program coordinators with the background and tools needed to conduct evaluations of activities within their EHE programs. The workshop covered 9 core IS competencies.

Results: There were 14 workshop participants, representing 25% of the 57 EHE jurisdictions. Participants felt that the workshop increased their IS technical skills [IS knowledge rating (0 to 5 scale) increased from a mean of 2.5 (day 1) to 4.2 (day 3)] and that the workshop helped them understand how implementation outcomes can strengthen their evaluation. They also noted that the workshop provided them with a useful framework to contextualize and evaluate EHE activities, with 83% of participants strongly agreeing that the content learned could be applied to their health department work.

Conclusions: IS short-courses are a promising strategy to increase health department evaluators' understanding of IS and to gain confidence in how to apply IS methods to their own EHE evaluations.