Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation: What Enablers Do We Need and When Do We Need Them to Ensure Success?

The gap between what is known from research, to applying that research in real-life situations is referred to as, the implementation gap. Implementation science has developed as a discipline to address this gap. It seeks to understand and map the processes to take what is known from scientific evidence and to bring this evidence to inform and improve policy and practice. As essential aspect of sustaining successful implementation is an adequate monitoring and evaluation system. Furthermore, a failure to monitor and evaluate is a failure to provide good governance. This chapter explores the application and practical use of a range of common implementation science frameworks. It provides details on the enablers and barriers during the various stages of implementation and on cycles of improvement. The chapter explains the steps for a successful evaluation and how data can be generated for this. This includes indicator data from a monitoring system. The chapter concludes with two practical case studies, one describing a program to increase PhD education within healthcare and one to increase clinical research outputs with an example from an HIV/AIDS clinic.