Integrating Implementation Outcomes into Effectiveness Studies: A Practical Guide for Clinical Interventionists

Designing effectiveness studies with implementation in mind can allow interventionists to translate their research into real-world practice. Implementation outcomes measure how much and how well a particular intervention was implemented and can provide valuable insights into any heterogeneity in effectiveness outcomes. As part of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Helping to End Addiction Long-term® (HEAL) Initiative’s Data2Action program, a workgroup of the Research Adoption Support Center (RASC) was tasked with creating a resource guide to aid clinical interventionists in integrating implementation outcomes into their research plans. This paper aims to provide a plain-language, pragmatic guide to implementation outcomes for clinical interventionists, including key considerations for each outcome and examples of implementation-effectiveness studies that reported implementation outcomes. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our guide and implementation outcome reporting more broadly. We offer suggestions for implementation scientists and clinical interventionists to work toward a common goal of improved implementation outcome reporting.