1. Research To Reality:
Moving Evidence Into Practice
Through A Community of Practice
Margaret M. Farrell MPH RD
Office of Partnership and Dissemination Initiatives
Office of Communications and Education
National Cancer Institute
farrellm@mail.nih.gov
@Margaretworking
2. Research To Reality:
Moving Evidence Into Practice
Through A Community of Practice
Margaret M. Farrell; Alissa Gallagher; E. Peyton Purcell; Madeline La Porta; Cynthia Vinson;
Michael Sanchez; Natalie Zeigler; Candace D. Maynard; Theresa Devine
Disseminating and implementing evidence-based interventions require an active role beyond static web 1.0 resources. Researchers, community
practitioners, and government partnerships must develop innovative ways to address the pressing issue of translating research into practice.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI)’s Research-to-Reality (R2R) community of practice is an important aspect of the ongoing national
dialogue about how practitioners and researchers can work together to move "programs that work" into the communities where they are
needed most.
Since its launch in March 2010, the R2R site (researchtoreality.cancer.gov) has convened and engaged researchers and cancer control
practitioners in an ongoing dialogue around identifying, adapting and implementing research-tested interventions and evidence-based
programs and policies into practice.
R2R leverages a variety of applications in its work to develop a community of practice around this essential work. In order to engage researchers
and cancer control practitioners, the NCI began and sustains a series of monthly “cyber-seminars” designed to highlight real world programs
and initiate discussions between researchers and practitioners. This was an essential first step toward creating a community of practice.
Through ongoing discussions, featured content and partner highlights, R2R convenes stakeholders at the local, state, tribal, jurisdictional and
national levels and encourages them to share their considerable knowledge and experience in addressing the burden of cancer.
As of February 2012, there are more than 800 registered members of the R2R community. More than 800 researchers and practitioners register
for the monthly cyber-seminars and the site hosts more than 9.500 page views and 8,000 site visits on an average month. The level of
engagement on the site, measured by time spent on the site, questions submitted via the cyber-seminars and discussions initiated and
followed has continued to grow at a steady pace.
This presentation will outline work and findings to date of R2R’s ability to build the capacity of the public health workforce to reduce the gap
between research and practice.
3. What Does It Take To
Move Research Into Practice?
10. CIS Partnership Program
• “Dissemination Arm”
– Training partners
• Using What Works
• P.L.A.N.E.T.
– Leading by Example
• “Push-Pull” model in action
• Provided leadership comprehensive
cancer control movement
• Created a community of practitioners
11. Can NCI Create
Framework for Engagement?
• Cancer Control P.L.A.N.E.T.
– Provides access to data and research-tested
resources
– 5 step approach: design, implement, adapt,
and evaluate evidence-based cancer control
programs
• Step 2: “Find A Partner”
• RTIPS: Research-Tested Interventions
12. Communities of Practice
“groups of people who share a concern, a
set of problems, or a passion about a
topic, and who deepen their knowledge
and expertise in this area by interacting on
an ongoing basis”
Wenger, et al., 2002
13. Creating a Community of
Engagement
• FRAMEWORK:
discussions and interaction to take place within the
P.L.A.N.E.T. portal
• BUILD CAPACITY
Sharing best practices, learn from others, and enhance
skills through training opportunities
• ENGAGE:
Communication between researchers and practitioners
is central to adapting research tested interventions
14. Cyber-Seminar Series
• Focus on translating research into practice
• Foster engagement and dialogue by pairing
researcher with practitioners
• Provide a forum to discuss successes and
challenges around implementing evidence-
based cancer control programs
• Convene a community by providing
consistent content on a regular basis
18. Cynthia replied on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - 1:52pm
Hi Margaret, Engaging The Community
Rajeshwari replied on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - 1:26pm Hi all,
I would love to share a couple of things that I would
consider "tidings of great joy" that I was able to work on during
Thank you so much for starting this wonderful discussion. 2011 2012. First, I am very proud of all the work that has gone on
has treated me better than 2010 and 2009 combined. In 2011, I related to Research to Reality (R2R) and send a huge kudos
published my first research article on the utilization of out to the entire R2R team and community!
psychotropic medicines among U.S. cancer survivors. I feel
good about it. Then, I got postdoctoral fellowship in Scott & White Second, for the past several years I have struggled with
Healthcare. I am enjoying my return to academic or research field the issue of what it takes to be able to translate evidence-
after 2 years of working in the industry. Thus, 2011 has inspired based computerized tailored interventions into
to revive my career in the healthcare research field. practice. NCI has sponsored several meetings/expert
panel sessions to discuss how to do this. Based on these
Thanks, meetings two journal supplements were published in
Raj 2011.
The first was published in March 2011 in the inaugural issue
of Translational Behavioral Medicine (Volume 1, Number 1). I
was fortunate to work with some amazing colleagues on a
paper published in this supplement called "Adapting research-
tested computerized tailored interventions for broader
dissemination and implementation".
The second supplement was published in May 2011 in the
American Journal of Preventive Medicine (Volume 40(5),
Supplement 2 and focused on Cyberinfrastructure for
Consumer Health. Here is a link to the introduction to the
supplement: http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-
3797(11)00117-6/fulltext.
Thanks for starting the new year off on such a positive note.
Carrie replied on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - 1:15pm
Happy New Year!
In 2011, our team was instrumental in forming a regional
cancer coalition in a rural 29-county region in North
Carolina. Our initial coalition meeting was attended by 72
healthcare and community stakeholders from 27 counties
and 36 organizations. We are continuing to grow and moving
forward by building the infrastructure of the group and
collaborating with community partners in cancer-related
initiatives. Very exciting!
20. Become a Part of R2R
To Date:
834 registered
users
812 blocked
users
21. Measuring Our Success
The Macurium Set of Community of Practice Measurements
(1st edition- March 2006)
• Activity
– All signs of change and work, both direct and indirect
• Content
– All signs of participation and knowledge
• Interaction
– All signs of member socialization and collaboration
• Relevance
– All signs of effectiveness
• Usability
– All signs of the physical ease of use, quality and accessibility
26. • Collaborating is central to moving science
into practice
• It is within this collaborative “space” that
we are truly able to maximize our efforts
• Working within a community of practice
framework is not a “nice thing to do” --- it is
something we as practitioners “need to do”
31. Thank You! See you on R2R!
Margaret M. Farrell MPH RD
Office of Partnership and Dissemination Initiatives
Office of Communications and Education
National Cancer Institute
farrellm@mail.nih.gov
@Margaretworking
Notas del editor
Phrases:Moving research to realityEvidence integrationTranslating research into practiceSpeak to one simple idea --- to get programs that work into communities that need them in order to reduce burden of cancer ---- that “sticky”, difficult, but ultimately worthwhile undertaking --- advocacy groups, state cancer coalitions, health departments, others May cyber-seminar: wildly successful smokeless tobacco intervention in tribal community Washington state to industrial Western PA
Walk and chew gum at the same time --- In retrospect, right choice as it has allowed us to Introduce idea of a “test-bed” We’ve highlighted a variety of topics, but the overarching theme that has guided all of the presentations is moving research into practice.The seminars include both the research perspective and the practitioner perspectiveAll sessions have featured interactive Q&A sessions with participants to engage the community and provide a forum to discuss successes and challenges and share best practices.
And, this from the shameless commerce division of R2R…..Convening the community before the platform where it actually lived was fully developed proved to be a good strategy for us.
We still host monthly sessions, which gives us the opportunity to reach out to our community each month with something new that encourages them to come back and be part of the conversation. DATA: Average of 250 participants each month with about 1/3 returning regularly.As you can see from some of the screen shots, we’ve covered a variety of topics, but what makes these sessions unique is that we try to offer a balanced discussion by inviting both researchers and practitioners to present together. After each session, we give community members the opportunity to continue the conversation online through our discussion forum. Any questions we didn’t get to during the Q&A session are posted, and community members can ask the presenters additional questions, and in turn, they’ll respond…with a little prompting from us. The cyber-seminar discussions are the most active on the site – this one on mHealth initiatives had 9 comments.Our featured partner highlights also link to a discussion page inviting interaction with the partner. These linkages have been a really effective way to create engagement on the site.
We know from our research that providing timely, credible, and unique content – something members can’t get anywhere else – is important.We work closely with our internal working group to develop a content strategy that’s based on health observances, new research findings, and relevant initiatives from NCI and other government agencies. Within our content strategy, we’ve found that seeding is incredibly important both to model what we’d like interaction to look like on the site, and provide new and timely content. We also do a lot of outreach, where we solicit posts from SMEs. Vary the content of our discussions and “level of effort required” – Margaret did a nice job here seeding a light, not-so-intimidating discussion by inviting the community to share success stories from 2011.
Another important goal of R2R is to build capacity in the field or to teach others the art of evidence-based public health planning. In September we launch our “virtual mentorship pilot program” which live on R2R to do just this. 6 mentees or those new to the field were paired with 6 experienced mentors in cancer control and evidence-based program planning. 2nd release/”mini launch” - tested extremely well in usability testingBackend workspace and public-facing storyboards to share comments – community members can engage with the pairsMonthly posts – again, we are giving members a reason to return with fresh new content each month.
Learn more about R2R community and work being done in cancer control thru Featured R2R Partner content
Activity - All signs of change and work, both direct and indirect# of registered users# or registered users growth in the last 6 months # or registered users growth in the last year# of visitors per month (page views)# of members active in the month# of members active in the last 6 months# of members active in the last year% of members active in the last 6 months% of members active in the last year% of message written by members vs. team # of members with no messages in the last 6 months# of members with no messages in the last year% of members inactive in the period % of members inactive in the last yearContentAll signs of participation and knowledge# of events per month # of threads started per month# of answering messages sent per monthAverage answers per thread per month# of threads per user opened per month# of answers per user in the last 6 months# of answers per user in the last year # of new objects created/published per month# of objects created per member Interaction - All signs of member socialization and collaboration# of completed profile (pic/bio/degree/org)% of completed profile (pic/bio/degree/org) # of moderation actions per month# of moderation actions per member per month# of Cyber Seminar registration per month (web forms)# of Cyber Seminar registration per month (self & others)# of Cyber Seminar attendees per month (audio)# of Cyber Seminar attendees per month (webinar)% of repeat Cyber Seminar attendees (public comment)# of Public Comment form submissions % of registered users registering for Cyber Seminars# of questions received per Cyber Seminar# of questions answered per Cyber Seminar Relevance -All signs of effectiveness Perceived general usefulnessPerceived value as a resource for workUsability (All signs of the physical ease of use, quality and accessibility )Ease of finding the relevant content sought Ease of asking questions/posting messagesClarity and availability of rules and instructions governing these activitiesEase of use of uploading/publishing process and mechanismSpeed of response of any peer review or moderation processes involvedClarity and availability of rules and instructions governing these activities
Page View (PV) – Blue Line : # of times a page was viewedVisit – Red Line: Session in which a visitor comes to our siteTotal page views in 2011: 76,143 [Feb-Dec 2011] – total page views to date: 105,025Total page visits in 2011: 26,048 [Mar – Dec 2011] – total page visits to date: 35,791Explanations for MayMay represents the launch of the Mentorship page. We’ll look more at how this launch affected site traffic in the coming slides.While May had highest page views and visits, visitors averaged only 1.99 pages per visit (most likely the Mentorship page, as we see in our next slide) compared to the average page views per visit of 3.37 in July.Explanations for OctoberOctober page views and visits doubled from September 2011, and are the second highest numbers seen in 2011, behind May when the Mentorship page was launched. October represents launch of Mentorship program and mentorship stories. Significant promotion around posting of pair stories, including facebook and twitter. Time spent on site remained stable at an average of 4.1 minutes per visitor, higher than the industry average for blogs/discussion forums. Cyber-seminars page accounted for 16.4% of site traffic this month, which is the highest seen in 2011. 11% of visitors entering R2R directly through mentorship tab. Charlene Cariou and Hope Krebill drew the most page views of all mentor-mentee pairs this month, highlighting importance of mentor/mentee pairs promoting the site to their professional networks. Facebook was the second top referring website, after cancer.gov, accounting for 16.3% of referrals. This is the highest number of referrals from Facebook in all of 2011 (a 900% increase from September to October). General FB post on October cyber-seminar as well as social media toolkits for mentor-mentee pairs to use with customizable tweets and FB posts for organizational and personal use. This is the public face of R2R:Open access to the site because we recognized that as with most virtual CoP’s, we would probably have a large number of “interested observers” (aka, lurkers) who would benefit from simply reviewing the content without actively participating. However, users will be prompted to register and provide some basic information if they want to actually contribute content by joining a discussion or submitting an event to the calendar.
This visual shows the top pages based on the number of page views each month. Here, we see the top two most viewed pages are consistently the Home Page and Cyber-seminar. This is not surprising at all, for several reasons. Most often, people land on the home page and then navigate throughout the site from there. Secondly, our promotional activities currently promote our upcoming cyber-seminars, with links directly to the registration page in the e-blast and Cancer P.L.A.N.E.T. newsletter. In the future, the R2R team wants to see Discussions as a more popular area of the site. This graph confirms that Mentorship page was the primary draw to the site in May and June, coinciding with the launch of Mentorship page and application as well as the application period, which ended June 30th. January: Cyber-seminars continue to be top viewed section and top entry page of the site. Nearly 40% of visitors directly land on the cyber-seminars tab, while 19% enter the site via the home page. Direct landings on the Mentorship tab continue to drop; only 1% of visitors enter R2R through Mentorship. These high numbers for the cyber-seminars tab are consistent with high numbers of registrations this month. Cyber-seminar registration and attendance was highest ever, with 1,356 registrants and 763 audio participants. 76% of participants had never participated in a cyber-seminar before. This makes sense since we included new promotion channels to include those organizations with a vested interest in the new Commission on Cancer accreditation standards. Specifically, the CoC disseminated the cyber-seminar in their newsletter and to their member listserv.Observations: Home page and cyber-seminars tab clearly leaderMentorship tab plays big role in page views in May, June, and October, NovemberReally want to focus on the engagement and increasing traffic to discussions tab in 2012. Already, we’re seeing more responses and commenting and community-generated discussions in 2012. Discussions Data DiveSimilar to AccruanNet, I began cataloguing discussions, by topic, response, community-generated vs not. I will manage this monthly and will be conducting a thematic analysis to see the types of discussions which are most popular. At cursory glance, we see that tobacco control policies, obesity, and social media/mHealth are the most popular discussion threads on the site. To Date: [47 discussion threads]30% community-generated (anyone not on the program team)72% discussions with response49% with at least one community responseAverage responses per thread (overall): 2.1 (98 total responses)Average responses per thread (community): 1.3 (61 total responses)
Total participants to date:6,033 (audio) [Jan 2010-Feb 2012]Total registrants to date:12,231February’s cyber-seminar on Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Cancer Tool resulted in the largest attendance record to date in 2011; March’s cyber-seminar on, a videocast from the Conference on Dissemination and Implementation Science, resulted in the smallest audience. January and February cyber-seminars highest attendance since cyber-seminar launch. Cyber-seminar registration and attendance was highest ever, with 1,356 registrants and 763 audio participants. 76% of participants had never participated in a cyber-seminar before. This makes sense since we included new promotion channels to include those organizations with a vested interest in the new Commission on Cancer accreditation standards. Specifically, the CoC disseminated the cyber-seminar in their newsletter and to their member listserv. Registration and participation highest since launch of cyber-seminar series, largely due to topic relevancy to new CoC audiences.
Strategic Visioning Session (January)Framework and capacity building are both important goals for R2R, but most of our efforts and strategies in 2012 will focus on engagement. Describe Like-er ScaleFocus on working across the audience segments identified in the Like-er Scale