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How should information about barriers and the likely effects of strategies for addressing them be summarised?

In a policy brief, the section describing implementation considerations should include descriptions of the following:

A summary of findings, as described in SURE Guide 4 (together with worksheets for providing a summary of findings), can help decision makers to develop an accurate understanding of the effects of the implementation strategies described in a policy brief. The summary of findings should include:

  1. The characteristics of the evidence, including the types of participants, the types study settings, the implementation strategy, and what the strategy was compared to
  2. The most important outcomes, including intended changes (benefits) and possible harms and costs
  3. The estimated effect of the intervention on each important outcome (preferably in quantitative form)
  4. The amount of information upon which the information is based
  5. The quality of the evidence for each outcome

The same additional considerations described in SURE Guide 4 are relevant to implementation strategies. These include: judgements about the impacts on equity, resource usage and costs, and the need for monitoring and evaluation. An example of a Summary of Findings table for an implementation strategy is provided in Table 5.1. Additional examples, as well as guidance on making judgements about impacts on equity, resource use and costs, and monitoring and evaluation can be found in the SUPPORT Summaries (www.support-collaboration.org).

Workshop materials and a presentation on identifying and addressing barriers to implementing options are provided in the ‘Additional resources’ section of this guide. Further guidance on addressing how an option will be implemented is available in the SUPPORT Tool.

Table 5.1 An example of a Summary of Findings table for an implementation strategy: Educational meetings for health professionals.

An example Summary of Findings table
Footnotes

*The effect of educational meetings alone on professional practice was the same as for multifaceted interventions that included educational meetings
†The post intervention risk differences are adjusted for pre-intervention differences between the comparison groups
‡We have downgraded the evidence from high to moderate because of inconsistency in the results that could not be fully explained



This page was last updated November 2011.