Abstract
BackgroundThe effectiveness of many interventions to promote health and prevent disease has been well established. The imperative has therefore shifted from amassing evidence about efficacy to scale-up to maximise population-level health gains. Electronic implementation monitoring, or ‘e-monitoring’, systems have been designed to assist and track the delivery of preventive policies and programs. However, there is little evidence on whether e-monitoring systems improve the dissemination, adoption, and ongoing delivery of evidence-based preventive programs. Also, given considerable difficulties with e-monitoring systems in the clinical sector, scholars have called for a more sophisticated re-examination of e-monitoring’s role in enhancing implementation.MethodsIn the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, the Population Health Information Management System (PHIMS) was created to support the dissemination of obesity prevention programs to 6000 childcare centres and elementary schools across all 15 local health districts. We have established a three-way university-policymaker-practice research partnership to investigate the impact of PHIMS on practice, how PHIMS is used, and how achievement of key performance indicators of program adoption may be associated with local contextual factors. Our methods encompass ethnographic observation, key informant interviews and participatory workshops for data interpretation at a state and local level. We use an on-line social network analysis of the collaborative relationships across local health district health promotion teams to explore the relationship between PHIMS use and the organisational structure of practice.DiscussionInsights will be sensitised by institutional theory, practice theory and complex adaptive system thinking, among other theories which make sense of socio-technical action. Our working hypothesis is that the science of getting evidence-based programs into practice rests on an in-depth understanding of the role they play in the on-going system of local relationships and multiple accountabilities. Data will be synthesised to produce a typology to characterise local context, PHIMS use and key performance indicator achievement (of program implementation) across the 15 local health districts. Results could be used to continuously align e-monitoring technologies within quality improvement processes to ensure that such technologies enhance practice and innovation. A partnership approach to knowledge production increases the likelihood that findings will be put into practice.
Highlights
The effectiveness of many interventions to promote health and prevent disease has been well established
Governments, funders and organisations working in the preventive health sphere are increasingly developing electronic implementation monitoring, or ‘emonitoring’, systems to track the distribution of prevention policies, activities and programs
Four data collection activities are planned: (1) ethnography with local and state-level Healthy Children Initiative (HCI) teams; (2) semi-structured interviews with policy-level decision makers who play a role in preventive health activities, and/or whose work is informed, in part, by Population Health Information Management System (PHIMS) data; (3) workshops with health promotion practitioners during which we present data from the previous two phases to validate findings and, (4) a social network analysis with Local health district (LHD) health promotion units
Summary
The effectiveness of many interventions to promote health and prevent disease has been well established. The imperative has shifted from amassing evidence about efficacy to scale-up to maximise population-level health gains. Electronic implementation monitoring, or ‘e-monitoring’, systems have been designed to assist and track the delivery of preventive policies and programs. There is little evidence on whether emonitoring systems improve the dissemination, adoption, and ongoing delivery of evidence-based preventive programs. Given considerable difficulties with e-monitoring systems in the clinical sector, scholars have called for a more sophisticated re-examination of e-monitoring’s role in enhancing implementation
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
