Following The IS Chatter: What Were The Hot IS Topics in 2024
By Dr. Sobia Khan, Director of Implementation
3-min read
We‘ve had quite a year at TCI, and as the year winds down, it’s natural for us to reflect on what we’ve learned from and heard in all our interactions with our peers. In other words, we’re bringing you the “hot goss” in implementation science. 🗣️
Our inspiration for this bulletin comes from changemakers in our Implementing Change Community and from people we regularly interact with and with whom we tend to have long, meandering conversations. A common question they ask is: What are people talking about? This tends to be something we’re asked often because we’re fortunate enough to be able to move in different circles, across different fields of interest, and across different levels of the system. Our generalist approach to implementation creates the opportunity for us to take a bird’s-eye view of the field of implementation science and practice overall.
Key highlights from the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC) Conference
So, what have people been talking about? In many ways, from our perspective, 2024 feels like a shift in mindset in terms of how people see the role of practice in implementation science. The types of conversations we’ve been having are around lifting up practice and building better bridges between implementation science and practice. To exemplify this, at the beginning of the year TCI announced its partnership with the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC) to make strides in the field in bridging the science and practice gap.
We attended the SIRC Conference in September, which felt like a culmination of many ideas that people had been chewing on over the past year. Some highlights from the conference included:
A keen interest in relationships as a foundational part of implementation. We started this work in understanding the role of relationships as part of implementation practice a few years ago. At the conference, it was apparent that this has become a focus in implementation research, with the growth of team science and community-researcher relationships being a common topic of both presentations and conversations.
Thinking more deeply about context and readiness. Perhaps we’re biased because we delivered a preconference workshop on context, but there was a profound interest in better understanding strategies to address context (whereas prior work in implementation science related to context was focused on evaluating what contextual factors most frequently affect implementation).
A continued interest in understanding change mechanisms and strategy selection, with the acknowledgment that the complexity of this process needs to be further examined.
Deep dives into roles in implementation and the different ways that we can build knowledge and capacity for these roles. For example, what does the role of implementation support across the system look like in different contexts, and how does implementation support fit into an overarching implementation infrastructure?
Finally, an acknowledgment that even though the field is focusing more on practice, there is still a long way to go. We participated in a fishbowl discussion that emphasized how practice needs to be better centered in implementation science overall.
Key highlights from other discussions
Outside of the SIRC conference, we’ve presented at conferences, delivered workshops, collaboratively worked on projects, and had conversations with people who are thinking about implementation in different ways.
One key topic emerging is values-based implementation. This is not only about implementing with values but also about unpacking the underlying values and principles of the things we are implementing. We have been thinking about this for a while at TCI and have found that others are thinking deeply about it, too, to create sustainable change.
There are many people who are growing their implementation capacity within their organizations, and many of our conversations revolve around how to do this – what are the competencies required, and how do we understand what roles we need? We revised and released core competencies earlier this year, understanding that this is a burgeoning area of interest.
Finally, we are starting to have more conversations and do more work around how we can use implementation science to help high-level decision makers (e.g., national policymakers) make their policies more “implementable” (more to come here!)
As we continue our journey in implementation science together, we would love to continue hearing what is top of mind for you and how we can support you. In 2025, TCI will have many more events and opportunities for us to engage with one another – we would love to see you there!
This article was featured in our monthly Implementation in Action bulletin! Want to receive our next issue? Subscribe here.