What does it take to scale-up a complex intervention? Lessons learned from the Connect-Home transitional care...

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Nursing Research
• Implementation Science

Background:

• The Connect-Home intervention is a complex, nurse-developed program requiring a structured approach for wide-scale implementation.
• Scaling up interventions is crucial for translating research findings into practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To outline the research phases for planning the scale-up of the Connect-Home intervention.
• To apply Barker et al.'s framework to guide the scale-up process.

Main Methods:

• This is a discussion paper drawing on the research team's experience, literature, and theory.
• Multiple research studies were conducted, including formative work (2008-2015) and pilot testing (2015-2019).

Main Results:

• The research addressed key scale-up questions: who to involve, what strategies to use, how to achieve scale, and contextual factors influencing success.
• The study details methods for developing and testing strategies for scaling complex interventions.

Conclusions:

• A systematic approach for planning intervention scale-up can be applied by nurse researchers.
• Early planning for scale-up accelerates the translation of effective interventions into practice.