CEI has worked with UNICEF and Norway’s Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research to create a world-first implementation research case compendium, highlighting the role this dynamic science can play in delivering better outcomes for children.
The Implementation Research Compendium brings together nine real-world studies from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Europe. A summary of each study is presented, alongside learnings relating to key implementation domains, details of how findings were taken up in practice and insights on the value of bringing an implementation science lens to the work.
Complementing these comprehensive individual study portraits is an overview highlighting key themes, including the potential of implementation research to facilitate customisation and adaptation to context, its role in ensuring equity, and the potential for this science to enable identification and rectification of implementation bottlenecks.
“The compendium provides a one-stop, real-world resource that illustrates the power of implementation science to accelerate evidence take-up and improve outcomes,” says CEI Principal Advisor Anne-Marie Baan.
Taitos Matafeni, Knowledge Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Specialist at UNICEF, says: “Bringing together these studies in one place for the first time offers an important opportunity to accelerate learning and encourage wider use of implementation research in the face of global challenges for children and their families.”
CEI's introduction to the compendium notes: “UNICEF is committed to implementation research as a key difference-maker in accelerating outcomes for children and meeting Sustainable Development Goals.”
“Implementation research methods vary, but they can produce insights in close to real time and at a relatively low cost. It is about demonstrating value in understanding how to improve results for children, through better design and transfer of programmes, increased uptake and coverage, and system strengthening.”
The nine compendium studies, undertaken by global teams, are:
The publication, Implementation Research Compendium: A systematic presentation of the learnings from nine programmes, was developed by the Centre for Evidence Implementation with UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight, and the Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
CEI designed and co-hosted a comprehensive four-day workshop for UNICEF staff and partners in January 2022, "Cross-sectoral Learning in Implementation Research: Harnessing the potential to accelerate results for children" and wrote a position paper on what implementation research is and the role it plays in accelerating the take-up of evidence. The Implementation Research Compendium links with this previous work.
Access the compendium HERE
