Amsterdam Public Health

This Methodology webinar will be giving by two speakers: Janneke Harting (assistant professor at Amsterdam UMC) & Femke van Nassau (senior researcher at Amsterdam UMC)
Fidelity-adaptation debate: what is it and how to deal with it?
Many interventions that were found to be effective in a research setting, never find their way into public health practice. If such interventions are implemented in practice, this often occurs in a different manner than originally intended, which raises questions about their final impact. In the field of implementation research, these dilemma’s touch upon the fidelity-adaptation debate. Does implementation always require high fidelity or may intervention be adapted to the context? First, Janneke Harting en Femke van Nassau briefly present the different viewpoints on this matter. Next, they address probable implications inherent to this debate. What does it mean for the logic model of an intervention? How to measures fidelity and adaptation – or both? Is an RCT the optimal design to assess an intervention’s effectiveness? And how to deal with adaptations during intervention dissemination? As these are unsolved issues in implementation research, there will be ample room for discussion.