Opportunities to Advance Equity Through Implementation Strategy Design

Abstract

Background: Implementation strategies are potential tools for advancing equity goals in healthcare. Implementation scientists have increased attention to the integration of equity considerations into implementation research, but limited concrete guidance is available for developing implementation strategies to improve equity. Main: In parallel to an active hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial in two large health systems, our research team explored potential inequities in implementation across four non-study clinics, developed equity focused audit and feedback procedures, examined the feasibility of our approach, and identified design insights that could be tested in future work to inform equitable program scale-up. Based on our experiences deploying these strategies in pilot format, our research team identified key complexities meriting further examination in future work. These considerations are vital given the dearth of guidance on delivering feedback to clinicians in efforts to improve equity. Key takeaways include the importance of understanding local data culture, engaging constituents in co-design for the full feedback cycle, leveraging feedback for shared discourse, and centering multi-level strategies as part of robust implementation approaches. Conclusion: Prioritizing health equity in implementation science requires that research teams probe, interrogate, and innovate – and in doing so, grapple with central conceptual and pragmatic considerations that arise in the design of implementation strategies. Our work emphasizes the value of bidirectional and continuous learning.