Implementation Science Builds Partnerships to Create Better Access to Healthcare

We are continuing our new series Media Day, where we spotlight individual medical institutions and infectious disease programs. Today, we spotlight the University of North Carolina (UNC)’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases.

Implementation science is “the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other [evidence-based practices] (EBPs) into routine practice, and, hence, to improve the quality and effectiveness of health services.”¹

“Implementation scientists are really concerned with the what, why and how interventions work, in the real world, and then testing strategies to make them better,” said Michael Herce, MD, MPH, MSCR, associate professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases, UNC.

For Herce, much of his work has been focused on serving underserved and historically marginalized populations, including incarcerated and justice-involved people in Malawi, Zambia, and North Carolina.

“I really learned two lessons,” Herce said of his work. “The first is to always have humility, and the second is to build partnerships. So by having humility and building partnerships, I'm able to work with local communities and organizations that are able to share their lived experiences of a health problem with me and then also teach me how best to work within local health systems and within local community structures to have the most positive impact.”

Herce says the biggest barriers to bringing proven interventions for diseases like HIV, TB, or COVID-19 to the populations that need them most is political will and the failure of collective action.

“Too often in healthcare systems, healthcare teams and providers are fragmented. Organizations that work within a medical space may be disconnected from organizations working in the community, Herce said. “And so there's a barrier in bringing together people to come up with solutions. So under the best-case scenario, implementation science has strategies that bring diverse people and perspectives together to solve a common problem and generate a solution.”

He uses the example of COVID-19, and how during the height of the pandemic, UNC worked to bring together academic healthcare and community partners to devise shared goals.

“ It was sharing reliable health information with each other and within our networks, and then when we inevitably came across a hurdle, sitting down together and troubleshooting as one team,” Herce said.

This is the last in the UNC series, to view other interviews from the series, go here.

Reference
1. Bauer MS, Damschroder L, Hagedorn H, Smith J, Kilbourne AM. An introduction to implementation science for the non-specialist. BMC Psychol. 2015 Sep 16;3(1):32. doi: 10.1186/s40359-015-0089-9. PMID: 26376626; PMCID: PMC4573926.