Igniting Implementation of Evidence-based Cancer Control Interventions

This is a cross-post from the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Research to Reality Community of Practice.

Last summer, I had the honor of working with some of my colleagues here in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Science on an exciting project that we submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Ignite Accelerator. The Accelerator is designed to help federal staff improve the way their program, office or agency works. We applied to participate in Ignite because we wanted to find a way to improve how the Research-tested Intervention Programs (RTIPs) works. Our original concept for the Ignite project was to find ways to turn programs that have been posted on the RTIPs website into mobile applications that could be used more easily by practitioners. It was exciting to think about the possibilities for this type of work. Over three months our concept evolved significantly. Ignite provided us with training on human-centered design principles and entrepreneurial methodologies. Over the next three months, we spoke with thirty-four investigators and thirteen other stakeholders (e.g., industry, government, and small businesses) to better understand the issues related to moving research into practice. Interviews confirmed some of our assumptions and also gave us some ideas for things that NCI could do to help facilitate the process in the coming months and years. We know that investigators are dedicated to public health and want their work to have an impact on public health practice. An overarching message we heard from behavioral scientists was that they are well versed on developing and testing public health interventions but didn't feel they had the right skillset for marketing their programs or for implementing their program at the end of the research project. Based on the interviews, we decided to shift the focus of our concept from finding a way of turning RTIPs interventions into mobile applications to focusing on helping investigators design their interventions with dissemination and implementation in mind. The result of this effort was the creation of SPRINT (SPeeding Research -tested INTerventions). SPRINT is a new training program that will leverage the experience and impact of the NSF I-Corps program, customized specifically for cancer prevention and control scientists to maximally affect behavior change, maintenance, and adherence of their interventions. The program, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and run by instructors with extensive startup and teaching experience, will provide real-world, hands-on training on how to successfully incorporate cancer control innovations into successful products so they are ready to be put into real-world practice. We plan on conducting a pilot of SPRINT this summer. Once this pilot is underway, we hope to share our experiences and the experiences of investigators participating in the program.

The HHS IDEA Lab's Ignite Accelerator program is currently in the process of selecting the next round of Ignite teams and plans on announcing those teams in mid-March.