Upper Desc

Welcome to our web site and the initiative to improve health care and public health through enhanced scale-up and spread of effective health programs. This website was established in conjunction with the July 2010 Conference to Advance the State of the Science and Practice on Scale-up and Spread of Effective Health Programs, an event funded by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, Commonwealth Fund, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Donaghue Foundation and John A. Hartford Foundation. The initiative seeks to envision – and trigger – a new era of rapid and broad scale up of effective practices in health care and public health, to achieve improvements in health and quality of life through more rapid diffusion and uptake of effective, innovative practices.

This site contains materials from the conference and additional resources useful in research, policy and practice activities to enhance scale-up and spread.

The website and blog are accompanied by an email discussion list. To join the list, please send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@WWW.LISTSERV.VA.GOV with the command SUBSCRIBE SCALE-UP-SPREAD-DISC-L as the body of the message. Leave the subject line of your message blank, and delete any email “signature” or other text inserted into the message. If you encounter any difficulty please contact Deborah Jenkins (Deborah.Jenkins@va.gov).


Friday, July 9, 2010

A Few Brief Thoughts on Day Three

First and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the scale-up/spread conference during the past few days, including planning committee members, funding agencies, working group leaders, paper authors, recorders, logistics coordinators, and the impressive, diverse, and wonderful group of attendees. 
Second, I want to highlight three sample ideas that I think resonated with group members, as they were reflected in several of the recommendation statements provided during the report-out sessions toward the end of today:

1. We need to create a mechanism for sharing the rich set of stories that we have on scale-up/spread, which would include descriptions of both our successes and our failures. 

2. We need to re-conceptualize traditional forms of measurement and monitoring, from a perspective that is predominantly project-specific or time-limited to one that views data as a continuous, ongoing opportunity to learn about what is working, what isn't working, and what can still be improved.

3. We need to take advantage of the opportunity to describe, assess and/or test different strategies (or combination of strategies) of scale-up/spread as they occur in everyday settings where "pull" activity is already in place. Researchers should be embedded in such projects to help grow an evidence-base in scale-up/spread methodology. 

Finally, I would like to reiterate the fact that we really view this meeting as the beginning of a series of activities, collaborations, and products that will occur over the weeks, months, and years to come. We look forward to your suggestions, input, and contributions as we work collectively to advance this exciting field.

Wynne Norton 

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