This trans-NIH conference is part of OBSSR's new strategic prospectus which seeks to facilitate increased support for the science of implementation as a key avenue for moving behavioral and social science forward. Specifically, the prospectus calls for research to understand the factors promoting or impeding the adoption, adaptation, implementation, and maintenance of evidence-based practices by health providers, insurers, policy makers, and the public. This conference is also building on the momentum of three existing trans-NIH Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) which aim to support dissemination and implementation research (“Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health,” PAR-07-086, PAR-06-520, and PAR-06-521; http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-07-086.html; http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-06-520.html; http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-06-521.html.

These FOAs seek to test models which will sustain evidence-based health behavior change, preventive, diagnostic, treatment, and quality of life improvement services into public health and clinical practice settings.

The goals of the conference are four-fold:

1) To explicate the state of the theory, methods and practice of dissemination and implementation research
2) To highlight where increased conceptual, empirical, and methodological development is needed, thus identifying challenges for the field
3) To foster dissemination and implementation science with the ultimate goal of improving public health through the availability, adoption, adaptation, and sustained maintenance of efficacious approaches that improve the quality of health and human services
4) To recruit additional researchers and develop a diverse community of scientists, thus fostering the interdisciplinary collaborations necessary to pursue such complex and multidimensional dissemination and implementation research.

http://obssr.od.nih.gov/di2007/index.html