DELIBERATIONS ON THE DISSEMINATION OF PORT PRODUCTS - TRANSLATING RESEARCH FINDINGS INTO IMPROVED PATIENT OUTCOMES

This report outlines the activities undertaken by the Inter-PORT Disse mination work group during its first 2 years of operation. The work gr oup's initial purpose was to assist the individual PORTs in developing their plans for both disseminating research findings and evaluating t he effectiveness of these strategies. However, it became quickly appar ent that in a discipline little more than a decade old, a commonly und erstood vocabulary had yet to be adopted. Even the term ''disseminatio n'' held different meaning for different constituencies. Consequently, the work group has tried to encourage the development of both a defin itional framework and a set of common data elements of importance to a ll dissemination programs. The work group has analogously attempted to agree on minimum standards of methodologic rigor as a starting point for coordination of evaluations across PORTs. To help determine the po tential for further coordination, a matrix of each individual PORT's t arget audiences, intervention strategies, and evaluation designs has b een constructed. Much remains to be learned before we can know with an y certainty how best to translate research findings into useful behavi or change and improved patient outcomes. Our goal is that the efforts of the work group will serve to catalyze this process.