Understanding, Assessing, and Guiding Adaptations in Public Health and Health Systems Interventions: Current and Future Directions

There is a growing agreement that adaptations or changes to an intervention and implementation strategies are inevitable to support the implementation of interventions in real world settings. A critical area of research is emerging in dissemination and implementation science to better understand what adaptations are made, assess reasons why and when adaptations were made and, and with what impact before and during implementation of public health and health care programs. To answer these questions there is a need to systematically document and assess adaptations across the life cycle of a program. Methods are still evolving, and a range of questions remain to be studied. These questions include but are not limited to:
(1) what aspects of an intervention and an implementation strategy can be adapted and to what extent and who decides these adaptations;
(2) what are pragmatic approaches to documenting adaptations;
(3) how do we assess the impact of adaptations on implementation and effectiveness outcomes;
(4) how can we use real-time information about adaptations to guide improvement;
(5) how do contextual factors influence these issues; and
(6) how can we meaningfully involve stakeholders in these activities.

To advance the field and address these adaptation issues, the goal of this Research Topic is to highlight cutting-edge work on understanding, assessing, and guiding adaptations, and explore future directions. We are interested in work that addresses adaptations in a variety of contexts. Examples of topic areas include but are not limited to:

1. Conceptual models, research designs, and assessment approaches addressing the documentation and evaluation of adaptations;

2. Research studies representing diverse context including different countries, cultures, types of settings, and temporal contexts of early, mid, and late program adaptations;

3. Diverse types of adaptations: to the intervention (what), implementation strategies (how), or context (where);

4. Examples of engaging stakeholders in creation, assessment, evaluation, and guidance of adaptations;

5. Contributions from multiple disciplines and especially transdisciplinary work including public health, health services research, psychology, economics, medicine, anthropology, and social work.

We strongly encourage innovative research that demonstrates and highlights opportunities for future investigation and provides a multi-dimensional perspective. We encourage work from across the world, with a focus on original research.

The Topic Editors encourage the submission of an abstract prior to manuscript submission. Abstracts may not exceed 300 words and must be formatted as indicated in the Frontiers in Public Health journal author guidelines. Abstracts will be evaluated by a multidisciplinary, inter-professional review panel that will determine which abstracts are invited to submit full manuscripts. Evaluation criteria will include: (1) quality and rigor; 2) originality and advancing the field in D&I; (3) relevance to the Research Topic themes articulated above; and (4) clarity of writing and presentation.

Topic Editor Dr. Catherine Battaglia is a partner of The Joffit Group Inc. The other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic subject.