Implementation Science Branch

This program supports research that advances the dissemination and implementation of effective evidence-based interventions related to maternal heart, lung, blood, and sleep health to improve maternal health outcomes. It focuses on developing and testing strategies to enhance the uptake and adoption of evidence-based interventions. For example, the program supports research to enhance cardiovascular health during and after pregnancy to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, like improving respiratory health management for expecting and postpartum mothers, managing and preventing blood disorders or conditions in maternal care to ensure safer pregnancies, deliveries, and post-partum care, and optimizing sleep quality and managing sleep disorders in pregnant and postpartum women to support overall health and well-being. Another example is the program’s support of multi-level strategies to facilitate the population-level implementation of evidence-based interventions for those most impacted by maternal cardiovascular, respiratory, hematologic, and sleep disorders.

The Implementation Science in HIV/AIDS program supports implementation science strategies to address barriers that impede the scale-up and application of scientifically proven interventions in community and clinical settings for the prevention, control, and treatment of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders in people living with HIV. Research in this program seeks to understand the relevant patient, provider, and public health stakeholders, to examine novel and innovative late-stage implementation science strategies, to reduce disease burden worldwide, and to improve the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS. The NHLBI HIV/AIDS Program provides overall leadership for research in the areas of HIV and heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders. The NIH Office of AIDS Research develops the Trans-NIH Strategic Plan for HIV and HIV-Related Research, which serves as a roadmap for NIH HIV/AIDS research.

This program supports climate-related dissemination and implementation research studies targeting heart, lung, blood, and sleep risk factors, diseases, and conditions. It focuses on the developing and testing of contextually relevant strategies to support the uptake of evidence-based climate-related health interventions (e.g., tools, programs, policies) to improve health outcomes and resilience in populations experiencing health disparities. For instance, the program is interested in supporting research on developing, testing, and evaluating strategies to improve the uptake of climate-related heart, lung, blood, and sleep interventions in diverse settings (home-based, community-based, school-based, clinical-based, decentralized, etc.) The program also supports research on methods to enhance healthcare integration in the context of extreme weather events to improve screening, diagnosis, treatment, and/or management of heart, lung, blood, and sleep conditions. Research into strategies to promote the adoption and adherence to appropriate heart, lung, blood, and sleep evidence-based guidelines is also supported by this program.

The NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative develops the Trans-NIH Strategic Plan for Climate Health Research, which serves as a roadmap for Climate Health Research.

This program supports domestic and international implementation research to identify and test implementation strategies for delivering evidence-based heart, lung, blood, and sleep care in primary care settings. Researchers are encouraged to engage with community partners to drive the success of the implementation strategy being tested, including but not limited to nurse practitioners, patients, family members, therapists, pharmacists, community advisory boards, and schools. The program encourages those it funds to generate tools and insights, such as implementation cost, technical specifications for agnostic health IT functionality, training programs, and common data elements that provide reusable infrastructure to foster sustainment, scale, and spread of successful implementation strategies.

This program supports sustainable scientific workforce development and research capacity development in late-stage translation research and implementation science to address heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders. A core aspect of the program is a strong foundation in dissemination and implementation research- employing theories, models, frameworks, and analytic techniques to reduce research practice gaps and improve implementation outcomes. The program emphasizes collaborations with members of the diverse communities served to enhance context-sensitive research designs in the successful implementation of evidence-based practices. Focus areas for this program include theory, implementation, and evaluation approaches; creating partnerships with multilevel, transdisciplinary research teams; using research design, methods, and analyses appropriate for implementation; and conducting research at different and multiple levels of intervention (e.g., clinical, community, policy) and across health care, public health, and community settings. View current NHLBI training and career development opportunities.

This program leverages the Institute’s Small Business grant mechanisms to support the development of innovative technology, service delivery models, or designs to increase the adoption, uptake, and sustainability of evidence-based guideline recommendations for managing heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders. These technologies or service delivery models include multilevel (health systems, provider, and patient) facets and benefit populations such as racial or ethnic minority groups, rural populations, and low socioeconomic status groups.