Advancing Health Equity through Implementation Science: Environmental Scans and Cross-Site Collaboration

Project Summary

Social determinants of health are key influencers of health inequality. In collaboration with the six other Implementation Science Centers for Cancer Control (ISC3), this study will capture multiple dimensions of the economic, physical, social, healthcare-related environments to describe the outer context in which ISC3 interventions are implemented. We will capture adverse living and working conditions that may affect the ability of patients to participate in or adhere to recommendations, and the capacity of clinical and research staff to deliver and sustain study interventions. This will consist of generating a set of outer context common data elements (OC-CDE) and collecting them from public use databases.

We expect that these outer contextual factors can modify the impact of interventions, such that implementation in more disadvantaged contexts may be less successful than in more advantaged contexts. This data will allow us to investigate the extent to which this is true, variation across geographies/populations, and which specific contextual measures matter most. Ultimately, this will facilitate a better understanding of how implementation approaches can be tailored to address local area contexts, allowing for precision approaches to implementation equity.

Project Lead: Erica Warner

Publication

Warner ET, Huguet N, Fredericks M, Gundersen D, Nederveld A, Brown MC, Houston TK, Davis KL, Mazzucca S, Rendle KA, Emmons KM. Advancing health equity through implementation science: Identifying and examining measures of the outer setting. Social Science & Medicine. 2023;331:116095. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116095