Editorial Board
Editors-in-Chief
Anne Sales, PhD RN, Department of Veterans Affairs and University of Missouri, USA
Anne Sales is a nurse and Professor in the Sinclair School of Nursing and the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Missouri (Columbia), and she is the Associate Dean for Implementation Research and Health Delivery Effectiveness in the School of Medicine. She is also a Research Scientist at the Center for Clinical Management Research at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
Her training is in nursing, sociology, health economics, econometrics, and general health services research. Her work involves theory-based design of implementation interventions, including understanding how feedback reports affect provider behavior and through behavior change have an impact on patient outcomes; the role of social networks in implementation interventions; and effective implementation methods using electronic health records and digital interventions. She has completed over 40 funded research projects, many focused on implementation research. She was co-Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Science 2012-2019 and is a founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Science Communications.
Dong (Roman) Xu, PhD, Southern Medical University, China
Dong (Roman) Xu, PhD, MPP, is a professor of Global Health and Health Systems and director of Acacia Labs at Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China. He currently leads several large studies on the assessment and improvement of quality of primary health care in China and Nepal. Roman held leadership positions at the China Medical Board, Harvard Medical School’s Harvard Medical International, Medtronic Inc., and the Chinese Medical Association. He founded the Sun Yat-sen Global Health Insitute at Sun Yat-sen University. Roman received his Ph.D. in global health implementation science at the University of Washington, master in public policy from Harvard University, and medicine & English from Sichuan University.
Alison Hutchinson, PhD RN, Deakin University, Australia
Alison Hutchinson is a Registered Nurse and holds a Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Melbourne, a Master of Bioethics from Monash University and a Bachelor of Applied Science (Advanced Nursing) from La Trobe University, Australia. She is Chair in Nursing and Director of the Centre for Quality and Patient Research – Monash Health Partnership, and Professor of Nursing at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. She has the distinction of being one of only a few Australian nurses to have successfully completed a formal postdoctoral fellowship program overseas.
Supported by awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (now Alberta Innovates), Professor Hutchinson completed her fellowship in the Knowledge Utilization Studies Program at the University of Alberta, Canada, during 2007 to 2009. Professor Hutchinson has attracted competitive research funding from Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia and the Department of Health and Aging, Australia. She also serves on the board of a not-for-profit aged care organization.
She has worked in a variety of clinical, management, education and research roles across a range of public, private and tertiary health care settings. Her primary research interests center on improving care through the translation of research evidence into clinical practice and care of the older person.
Jure Baloh, PhD, MHA, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA
Jure Baloh, PhD, MHA, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Core Faculty in the Center for Implementation Research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). His research focuses on implementation of evidence-based practices and other innovations to improve quality and performance of health services organizations, such as hospitals, substance use disorder treatment programs, pharmacies, and federally qualified health centers. His primary area of interest is examining the role of organizational structures, processes, and strategies in innovation implementation. Dr Baloh received his MHA in health services administration from the University of Missouri and his PhD in health services and policy from the University of Iowa. He completed postdoctoral training in implementation science at the University of Iowa and UAMS, and is a scholar at The Institute for Implementation Science Scholars (IS-2) at the Washington University in St. Louis.
Rinad Beidas, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Rinad Beidas, PhD, is Chair and Ralph Seal Paffenbarger Professor of Medical Social Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Her previous role was Director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit; Founding Director of the Penn Implementation Science Center at the Leonard Davis Institute; Associate Director at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, Associate Professor of Psychiatry; Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Rinad received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Colgate University and a Doctorate of Philosophy in psychology from Temple University.
Her research is designed to draw on insights from behavioral economics and implementation science to make it easier for clinicians, leaders, and organizations to use best practices to improve the quality of care provided to patients and to improve health outcomes equitably. Broadly, her work entails three primary foci: 1) understanding the context in which individuals will implement evidence-based practices, 2) developing implementation approaches that target the factors that may accelerate or hinder implementation, and 3) conducting pragmatic trials to test these implementation approaches. She does this work across disease areas (e.g., mental health, cancer, HIV) and collaborates closely with key stakeholders, including patients, clinicians, health system leaders, payers, and policy-makers.
Yiyuan Cai, PhD, Guizhou Medical University, China
Yiyuan Cai holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Health Statistics from Sun Yat-sen University and is a doctoral supervisor and associate professor at the School of Public Health, Guizhou Medical University. She is trained in epidemiologic and statistical methods and has significant experience designing, implementing, and managing health service programs. Her primary research interests revolve around developing and applying healthcare quality evaluation instrument and and conducting implementation strategies for enhancing healthcare quality within primary healthcare settings.
She currently leads a project funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, a sub-project of the S-Lab study, and two university-level projects predominantly centered on assessing and enhancing primary healthcare quality in China, Nepal and Mozambique. She is also working as an adjunct faculty member of the Southern Medical University Center for World Health Organization Studies, a Member of Academic Committee of Stem Cell Clinical Research Institute Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, and in the construction of tightly-knit county medical communities of the Guizhou Provincial Health and Health Commission.
Shellie Ellis, MPH PhD, University of Kansas, USA
Shellie Ellis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health at the University of Kansas and an alumni of the Mentored Training in Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer (MT-DIRC) fellowship program.
Her training is in cultural anthropology and health services research. Her current work focuses on understanding and guiding the adoption of evidence-based cancer innovations among cancer specialty providers, particularly cancer care providers practicing in urologic, non-academic, and rural settings. She has designed implementation strategies for chronic disease interventions in both primary care and specialty care practices and conducted multiple studies to assess determinants of healthcare provider adoption and implementation of evidence-based practice.
Elvin Geng, MD MPH, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Elvin H. Geng, MD, MPH, serves as a Professor of Medicine within the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also leads as Director of the Center for Dissemination and Implementation. He earned his MD and MPH degrees from Columbia University, followed by post-doctoral fellowship training at both the Aaron Diamond AIDS Institute at Rockefeller University and the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Geng's research uses the lens of implementation science to refine the advance use of evidence-based interventions in combating HIV. He has led research using pioneering methodologies in observational epidemiology, such as doubling-sampling techniques, and innovative experimental designs like sequential and cluster randomization. He often incorporates methods from the social sciences into public health, including through the use of preference elicitation, discrete choice experiments, natural experiments. He also leads evidence projects, using network meta-analysis among other methods. In addition to his research, Dr Geng serves in advisory roles to the World Health Organization (as member of the Guideline Review Committee as well as the HIV Guideline Develop Group), various academic entities, and NGOs. He also maintains editorial positions at PLOS Medicine, Implementation Science Communications, and the Journal of the International AIDS Society.
Alison Hamilton, PhD, University of California Los Angeles and VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, USA
Alison Hamilton, PhD, MPH, is Chief Officer of Implementation & Policy at the VA Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation & Policy, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and a Research Anthropologist in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. She received her PhD in medical and psychological anthropology from UCLA in 2002, and her MPH in Community Health Sciences from UCLA in 2009. Alison is the Director of the VA-funded EMPOWER (Enhancing Mental and Physical Health of Women through Engagement and Retention) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), focused on improving women Veterans’ health and health care through implementation science. She also directs the VA QUERI-funded evidence-based quality improvement training hub. Alison specializes in women's health, mental health, and implementation science across several VA- and NIH-funded initiatives. She was in the inaugural cohort of the Implementation Research Institute and she serves on the editorial boards of Implementation Science, Implementation Research and Practice, and Women’s Health Issues.
Bev J. Holmes, PhD, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, Canada
Bev Holmes is President & CEO of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR), where she is focused on the funding, production, and uptake of health research and health care-related evidence in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Since joining MSFHR in 2010, Bev has supported the Foundation through a period of organizational redesign, established MSFHR as a leader in knowledge translation, and supported the launch of a new suite of funding programs focused on developing, retaining, and recruiting BC health research talent.
An active and respected member of the health research community, Bev’s research interests include knowledge translation, discourse analysis, health communication, risk communication, and public involvement in health research.
Roman Kislov, PhD, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Dr Roman Kislov is a Reader in Organisation Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Health Policy and Organisation, University of Manchester, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation (AusHSI), Queensland University of Technology. Roman conducts qualitative research on the processes and practices of knowledge mobilisation, with a particular interest in communities of practice, intermediary roles, organisational learning and implementation of change. His work crosses disciplinary boundaries between organisation studies, public administration and health services research.
Roman is currently a Deputy Theme Lead for Implementation Science in the National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration (NIHR ARC) Greater Manchester—a large-scale partnership between universities, NHS providers and third-sector organisations aiming to produce research that responds to the needs of local health and care system across the region. Previously, he led research projects on knowledge brokering, leadership for knowledge mobilisation and co-production of research in multiprofessional project teams. In 2016-2018, he was a country lead investigator for FLAME (Facilitators and Leaders Actively Mobilising Evidence)—a comparative case study of evidence-based practice in nursing across Australia, Canada, Sweden and the UK.
Prior to pursuing an academic career, Roman worked as a doctor for a gold mining company in Central Asia, combining clinical work with a managerial post. He is a regular contributor to Implementation Science, and his work has also recently appeared in Public Administration Review, Organization Studies, Public Administration, International Journal of Nursing Studies and BMJ Quality & Safety.
Aaloke Mody, MD, Washington University School of Medicine, USA
Aaloke Mody, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Department of Medicine at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. He is a physician with training in HIV, infectious diseases, and epidemiologic methods. His overarching research interests are in utilizing implementation science and epidemiologic methods to better understand how to deliver high-quality and patient-centered HIV care in routine practice resource-limited settings. He has specific expertise in pragmatic study designs and utilizing advanced epidemiologic methods, including natural experiments and other causal methods for real-world data, to better understand real-world implementation of public health programs in these settings. Aaloke currently works extensively with the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ), a nongovernmental organization based out of Lusaka, Zambia that supports over 300 Ministry of Health-run clinics across two provinces in Zambia. Aaloke also serves as a lead consultant for the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core (DIRC) in the Institute for Clinical Translational Science at Washington University in St. Louis.
Rohit Ramaswamy, PhD, Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, USA
Rohit Ramaswamy, PhD, MPH, Grad Dipl. (Bios) is a Professor in the Public Health Leadership and Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the faculty director of the Global Online MPH (GO MPH) degree that is focused on building the implementation and improvement science capability of working global public health professionals around the world. He is also the co-director of the UNC/RTI Consortium for Implementation Science.
Ramaswamy’s area of expertise is Applied Implementation and Improvement Sciences, which is the development and evaluation of systematic methods and tools to sustainably implement and improve complex interventions. His work blends the tools of systems science, design thinking, implementation science and continuous quality improvement to build local capacity for implementation. His global projects include the improvement of clinical and operational processes in tertiary maternity hospitals in Ghana, developing the quality improvement capability of district level government staff in Kenya and integrating mental health service delivery into the district primary health care system in India. He has developed and taught at the M.Sc program in Implementation Science at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and at the University of Zambia.
Ramaswamy has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, MS and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a MPH degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Graduate Diploma in Biostatistics from the University of Sydney. He is the author of two books on quality improvement methods.
Ted Skolarus, MD, University of Chicago, USA
Rachel Tabak, PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Rachel Tabak is a part of the Prevention Research Center and the Center for Diabetes Translation Research and works in obesity prevention and community-based physical activity and nutrition strategies. She is also interested in dissemination and implementation research.
With a strong background in nutrition, Rachel is involved in research studies examining interventions to promote healthy nutrition and activity behaviors in families, particularly in the home environment. She also evaluates the effect of worksite policies and environments on worker health behaviors. Rachel's work includes translation and evaluation of evidence-based obesity prevention interventions that allow for broad reach. She examines how key stakeholders, including researchers, advocates, and policymakers, affect how research evidence is transformed into programs and policies.
Michel Wensing, PhD, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Michel Wensing is Full Professor at Heidelberg University in Germany for Health Services Research and Implementation Science in Healthcare. He is embedded in the Department of General Practice and Health Services Research at Heidelberg University Hospital. He is currently adjunct head of department and head of a MSc program at Heidelberg University. He holds degrees in sociology, medical sciences, and medical care research.
His research focuses on primary and ambulatory healthcare, and on implementation science concepts, such as tailored implementation, patient self-management, and provider networks.
Michel Wensing has been a member of the Implementation Science editorial team since the journal started in 2006, and was co-Editor-in-Chief of that journal from 2012 to 2022, and remains involved as an Associate Editor. Having been on the Editorial Board since its founding, he came an Associate Editor for Implementation Science Communications in 2023.
Gregory Aarons, PhD, University of California, San Diego, USA
Gregory Aarons, PhD is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, Co-Director of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute Dissemination and Implementation Science Center, and Director of the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center.
Dr Aarons’ research has been funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the W.T. Grant Foundation. His work focuses on identifying and improving system, organizational, and individual factors that impact implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices, use of research evidence, and quality of care in health care and public sector allied health practice settings. Dr. Aarons has developed implementation frameworks, community-engaged implementation and scale-up strategies, and pragmatic measures. Dr Aarons works with collaborators on implementation projects in the United States, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and Australia.
Dr Aarons joined the Implementation Science editorial team as an Associate Editor in 2009 and served in that role until transitioning to Co-Editor-in-Chief in 2022.
Rebecca Armstrong, PhD, National Disability Insurance Agency, Australia
Rebecca Armstrong is the Executive Manager of Knowledge Translation & Impact at the Australian Institute for Family Studies, and has an appointment at the University of Melbourne where she is Director of Public Health Insight and the joint Co-ordinating Editor of Cochrane Public Health. Rebecca is a public health researcher with more than 10 years experience developing and evaluating knowledge translation projects. Rebecca holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne where she led the development of a cluster RCT in local government exploring the effectiveness of KT strategies. This work has informed a series of initiatives focused on facilitating evidence-informed public health practice for practitioners including the development of short courses and an evaluation of a large-scale KT platform for obesity prevention practitioners. Rebecca and her team have also developed a program of work to support researchers to develop KT plans. They have been working with research teams to develop KT plans and have developed a successful short course to build research capacity in this area.
Rebecca’s current roles focus on supporting researchers to develop and evaluate their own KT efforts and the development of products, including systematic reviews, to facilitate evidence-informed public health. At AIFS Rebecca is overseeing the development and implementation of an agency-wide KT strategy to support policy and practice in the social services sector.
Ana Baumann, PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Ana Baumann's research agenda focuses on identifying strategies to facilitate the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions in low-resource settings. Ana is the co-director of the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core (DIRC), a core from the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) at Washington University in St. Louis. The DIRC team provides methodological expertise to advance translational research to inform and move efficacious health practices from clinical knowledge to routine care. Through DIRC, she has supported several investigators as an implementation scientist in receiving federally funded funds to conduct studies aiming to accelerate the use of evidence-based interventions or guidelines in different settings of care. Ana is passionate about reducing disparities in healthcare delivery for vulnerable population in the U.S. and globally.
Justin Benzer, PhD, Department of Veterans Affairs and The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Justin Benzer is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School Psychiatry Department and the Implementation Science Core Chief at the VISN 17 Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is trained as an industrial/organizational psychologist and health services researcher. His research focuses on the intersection of organization science and implementation science. Justin is currently involved in several projects evaluating the implementation of integrated mental health and medical care, as well as several health services research projects testing how patient and provider factors affect integrated care.
Anna Bergström, PhD, Uppsala University, Sweden
Dr Anna Bergström is an implementation scientist at the Uppsala Global Health Research on Implementation and Sustainability at the Dept of Women´s and Children´s Health at Uppsala University in Sweden and at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. Anna’s particular interest in implementation science lies in understanding how to build implementation capacity in systems that can manage wicked problems as well as how context influences change processes in healthcare systems. Anna coordinated the development of the Context Assessment for Community Health (COACH) tool in a large consortium of researchers from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Uganda, South Africa, Nicaragua and Canada. Previously, she has been involved in research in Nepal, Mozambique, Uganda and Tanzania aimed to improve maternal and neonatal health practices and implementation of evidence-based methods. Aside from her research, she is also working as an implementation expert at the Unit for Implementation and Evaluation at the Center for Epidemiology and Community medicine in Region Stockholm in Sweden where she contributes to building implementation capacity across health and welfare organisations in the Region.
Ross Brownson, MPH PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Ross Brownson is the Lipstein Distinguished Professor and Director of the Prevention Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis.
Ross studies the translation of evidence to public health practice and policy, with a content focus on environmental and policy determinants of cancer and other chronic diseases. He has extensive experience in public health practice, with decades of knowledge working with state and local health agencies in the United States and globally.
To build capacity in our field, Ross leads or co-leads a number of training programs in implementation science including the recently completed Mentored Training for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer and the current program: Institute for Implementation Science Scholars.
Chris Carroll, PhD, University of Sheffield, UK
Chris Carroll is a Reader in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield, UK. Chris' research focuses on: the development and application of systematic review and evidence synthesis methods, especially framework synthesis approaches; the use of research in health policy; and the development and testing of frameworks for implementation fidelity.
Lauren Clack, PhD, University of Zürich, Switzerland
Lauren Clack is a Professor of Implementation Science in Health Care at the Medical Faculty, University of Zurich. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Zurich and a MSc in Applied Ergonomics (Human Factors Engineering) from the University of Nottingham.
From 2011 to 2020, she worked as a researcher and project leader, first at the University Hospitals of Geneva and then at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Zurich. She specializes in the application of implementation science methodology and human-centered design to improve the systematic integration of evidence-based infection prevention and patient safety interventions into care.
Janet Curran, PhD RN, Dalhousie University, Canada
Erin Finley, PhD, The Department of Veterans Affairs, University of Texas Health San Antonio, USA