Principles of implementation behavior research in European health psychology: increasing the impact of health interventions

Abstract

• Update on research in implementation of health interventions • Make European Health Psychologist aware of importance of implementation research • Build up network of European Health Psychologists dealing with implementation issues • Provide tools to perform implementation research Research in European Health Psychology mainly focuses on the principles of individual health behavior and health interventions. However, the even so important research on principles of actual implementation of these health interventions is running far behind as compared to the work of our colleagues in the USA. With this symposium, we add to the principles of behavior change theme of the conference by focusing on implementation behavior to further increase the impact on health. Although many health promotion interventions have been developed, only a fraction is implemented in practice as intended. Since this also accounts for interventions that proved efficacious, it is fair to conclude that proven effectiveness is a necessary but insufficient condition for reaching any public health impact. Research on processes of health education implementation is thus very important but often lacking in the planning of these innovations. With this symposium we want to pay attention to this issue by presenting research on the implementation of innovations in a range of different settings (schools, youth care, community, public health), using different methods (quantitative and qualitative). VanLieshout presents work showing how implementation research adds to interpretation of an outcome evaluation in the field of youth care. Gugglberger follows with a study on the antecedents of school health promotion implementation. VanderKleij shows that determinants of the implementation of a child obesity reduction intervention differ at different community levels. Guldbrandsson’s work focuses on higher order processes of decision making about the adoption and implementation in public health policy making. In the end, Paulussen will present an evidence-based framework for evaluating implementation of innovations.