Editorial Board profiles

Anne Sales is a nurse and Professor in the Sinclair School of Nursing and the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Missouri (Columbia), and she is the Associate Dean for Implementation Research and Health Delivery Effectiveness in the School of Medicine. She is also a Research Scientist at the Center for Clinical Management Research at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

Her training is in nursing, sociology, health economics, econometrics, and general health services research.  Her work involves theory-based design of implementation interventions, including understanding how feedback reports affect provider behavior and through behavior change have an impact on patient outcomes; the role of social networks in implementation interventions; and effective implementation methods using electronic health records and digital interventions. She has completed over 40 funded research projects, many focused on implementation research. She was co-Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Science 2012-2019 and is a founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Science Communications.

Alison Hutchinson is a Registered Nurse and holds a Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Melbourne, a Master of Bioethics from Monash University and a Bachelor of Applied Science (Advanced Nursing) from La Trobe University, Australia. She is Chair in Nursing and Director of the Centre for Quality and Patient Research – Monash Health Partnership, and Professor of Nursing at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. She has the distinction of being one of only a few Australian nurses to have successfully completed a formal postdoctoral fellowship program overseas.

Supported by awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (now Alberta Innovates), Professor Hutchinson completed her fellowship in the Knowledge Utilization Studies Program at the University of Alberta, Canada, during 2007 to 2009. Professor Hutchinson has attracted competitive research funding from Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia and the Department of Health and Aging, Australia. She also serves on the board of a not-for-profit aged care organization.

She has worked in a variety of clinical, management, education and research roles across a range of public, private and tertiary health care settings. Her primary research interests center on improving care through the translation of research evidence into clinical practice and care of the older person.

Jure Baloh, PhD, MHA, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Core Faculty in the Center for Implementation Research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). His research focuses on implementation of evidence-based practices and other innovations to improve quality and performance of health services organizations, such as hospitals, substance use disorder treatment programs, pharmacies, and federally qualified health centers. His primary area of interest is examining the role of organizational structures, processes, and strategies in innovation implementation. Dr Baloh received his MHA in health services administration from the University of Missouri and his PhD in health services and policy from the University of Iowa. He completed postdoctoral training in implementation science at the University of Iowa and UAMS, and is a scholar at The Institute for Implementation Science Scholars (IS-2) at the Washington University in St. Louis.

Rinad Beidas, PhD, is Chair and Ralph Seal Paffenbarger Professor of Medical Social Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Her previous role was Director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit; Founding Director of the Penn Implementation Science Center at the Leonard Davis Institute; Associate Director at the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, Associate Professor of Psychiatry; Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Rinad received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Colgate University and a Doctorate of Philosophy in psychology from Temple University.

Her research is designed to draw on insights from behavioral economics and implementation science to make it easier for clinicians, leaders, and organizations to use best practices to improve the quality of care provided to patients and to improve health outcomes equitably. Broadly, her work entails three primary foci: 1) understanding the context in which individuals will implement evidence-based practices, 2) developing implementation approaches that target the factors that may accelerate or hinder implementation, and 3) conducting pragmatic trials to test these implementation approaches. She does this work across disease areas (e.g., mental health, cancer, HIV) and collaborates closely with key stakeholders, including patients, clinicians, health system leaders, payers, and policy-makers.

Yiyuan Cai holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Health Statistics from Sun Yat-sen University and is a doctoral supervisor and associate professor at the School of Public Health, Guizhou Medical University. She is trained in epidemiologic and statistical methods and has significant experience designing, implementing, and managing health service programs. Her primary research interests revolve around developing and applying healthcare quality evaluation instrument and and conducting implementation strategies for enhancing healthcare quality within primary healthcare settings. 

She currently leads a project funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, a sub-project of the S-Lab study, and two university-level projects predominantly centered on assessing and enhancing primary healthcare quality in China, Nepal and Mozambique. She is also working as an adjunct faculty member of the Southern Medical University Center for World Health Organization Studies, a Member of Academic Committee of Stem Cell Clinical Research Institute Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, and in the construction of tightly-knit county medical communities of the Guizhou Provincial Health and Health Commission.

Shellie Ellis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health at the University of Kansas and an alumni of the Mentored Training in Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer (MT-DIRC) fellowship program.

Her training is in cultural anthropology and health services research. Her current work focuses on understanding and guiding the adoption of evidence-based cancer innovations among cancer specialty providers, particularly cancer care providers practicing in urologic, non-academic, and rural settings. She has designed implementation strategies for chronic disease interventions in both primary care and specialty care practices and conducted multiple studies to assess determinants of healthcare provider adoption and implementation of evidence-based practice.

Elvin H. Geng, MD, MPH, serves as a Professor of Medicine within the Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also leads as Director of the Center for Dissemination and Implementation. He earned his MD and MPH degrees from Columbia University, followed by post-doctoral fellowship training at both the Aaron Diamond AIDS Institute at Rockefeller University and the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Geng's research uses the lens of implementation science to refine the advance use of evidence-based interventions in combating HIV. He has led research using pioneering methodologies in observational epidemiology, such as doubling-sampling techniques, and innovative experimental designs like sequential and cluster randomization.  He often incorporates methods from the social sciences into public health, including through the use of preference elicitation, discrete choice experiments, natural experiments. He also leads evidence projects, using network meta-analysis among other methods. In addition to his research, Dr Geng serves in advisory roles to the World Health Organization (as member of the Guideline Review Committee as well as the HIV Guideline Develop Group), various academic entities, and NGOs. He also maintains editorial positions at PLOS Medicine, Implementation Science Communications, and the Journal of the International AIDS Society.

Alison Hamilton, PhD, MPH, is Chief Officer of Implementation & Policy at the VA Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation & Policy, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and a Research Anthropologist in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. She received her PhD in medical and psychological anthropology from UCLA in 2002, and her MPH in Community Health Sciences from UCLA in 2009. Alison is the Director of the VA-funded EMPOWER (Enhancing Mental and Physical Health of Women through Engagement and Retention) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), focused on improving women Veterans’ health and health care through implementation science. She also directs the VA QUERI-funded evidence-based quality improvement training hub. Alison specializes in women's health, mental health, and implementation science across several VA- and NIH-funded initiatives. She was in the inaugural cohort of the Implementation Research Institute and she serves on the editorial boards of Implementation Science, Implementation Research and Practice, and Women’s Health Issues.

Bev Holmes is President & CEO of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR), where she is focused on the funding, production, and uptake of health research and health care-related evidence in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Since joining MSFHR in 2010, Bev has supported the Foundation through a period of organizational redesign, established MSFHR as a leader in knowledge translation, and supported the launch of a new suite of funding programs focused on developing, retaining, and recruiting BC health research talent. 

An active and respected member of the health research community, Bev’s research interests include knowledge translation, discourse analysis, health communication, risk communication, and public involvement in health research.

Dr Roman Kislov is a Reader in Organisation Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Health Policy and Organisation, University of Manchester, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation (AusHSI), Queensland University of Technology. Roman conducts qualitative research on the processes and practices of knowledge mobilisation, with a particular interest in communities of practice, intermediary roles, organisational learning and implementation of change. His work crosses disciplinary boundaries between organisation studies, public administration and health services research.

Roman is currently a Deputy Theme Lead for Implementation Science in the National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration (NIHR ARC) Greater Manchester—a large-scale partnership between universities, NHS providers and third-sector organisations aiming to produce research that responds to the needs of local health and care system across the region. Previously, he led research projects on knowledge brokering, leadership for knowledge mobilisation and co-production of research in multiprofessional project teams. In 2016-2018, he was a country lead investigator for FLAME (Facilitators and Leaders Actively Mobilising Evidence)—a comparative case study of evidence-based practice in nursing across Australia, Canada, Sweden and the UK.

Prior to pursuing an academic career, Roman worked as a doctor for a gold mining company in Central Asia, combining clinical work with a managerial post. He is a regular contributor to Implementation Science, and his work has also recently appeared in Public Administration Review, Organization Studies, Public Administration, International Journal of Nursing Studies and BMJ Quality & Safety.

Fabiana Lorencatto is the Research Lead at the University College London Centre for Behaviour Change. Fabiana's training is in health psychology and behavioral science. Her research focuses on applying behavioral change theory and methods to explore factors influencing clinical practice behaviors, as a basis for designing interventions to improve the quality of healthcare. 

Fabiana is currently involved in a number of multidisciplinary programs of research focusing on improving the implementation of evidence-based practice across a range of clinical areas, including: blood transfusion, antimicrobial stewardship and infection prevention control, maternal and neonatal health, smoking cessation, and diabetic retinopathy screening. Fabiana also has specific methodological interests in synthesising evidence on behavior change interventions and conducting process evaluations of complex interventions, particularly the assessment of intervention fidelity.

Rohit Ramaswamy, PhD, MPH, Grad Dipl. (Bios) is a Professor in the Public Health Leadership and Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the faculty director of the Global Online MPH (GO MPH) degree that is focused on building the implementation and improvement science capability of working global public health professionals around the world. He is also the co-director of the UNC/RTI Consortium for Implementation Science.

Ramaswamy’s area of expertise is Applied Implementation and Improvement Sciences, which is the development and evaluation of systematic methods and tools to sustainably implement and improve complex interventions. His work blends the tools of systems science, design thinking, implementation science and continuous quality improvement to build local capacity for implementation. His global projects include the improvement of clinical and operational processes in tertiary maternity hospitals in Ghana, developing the quality improvement capability of district level government staff in Kenya and integrating mental health service delivery into the district primary health care system in India. He has developed and taught at the M.Sc program in Implementation Science at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and at the University of Zambia.

Ramaswamy has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, MS and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a MPH degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Graduate Diploma in Biostatistics from the University of Sydney. He is the author of two books on quality improvement  methods.

Nicole Rankin is a Senior Research Fellow in Implementation Science in the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia. She leads the implementation science program for Sydney Health Partners, an Advanced Health Research and Translation Centre funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia.

Nicole’s background qualifications are in behavioral science in relation to medicine, psychology, and sociology. She has more than 20 years' experience working on cancer control programs across government agencies, charities, and in academia. Her research interests include how health interventions are implemented into policy and practice, particularly in lung cancer screening, early detection, and multidisciplinary care.

Nicole is a Fellow of the Mentored Training for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer program (2016-2018), Washington University in St Louis.

Rachel Tabak is a part of the Prevention Research Center and the Center for Diabetes Translation Research and works in obesity prevention and community-based physical activity and nutrition strategies. She is also interested in dissemination and implementation research. 

With a strong background in nutrition, Rachel is involved in research studies examining interventions to promote healthy nutrition and activity behaviors in families, particularly in the home environment. She also evaluates the effect of worksite policies and environments on worker health behaviors. Rachel's work includes translation and evaluation of evidence-based obesity prevention interventions that allow for broad reach. She examines how key stakeholders, including researchers, advocates, and policymakers, affect how research evidence is transformed into programs and policies.

Michel Wensing is Full Professor at Heidelberg University in Germany for Health Services Research and Implementation Science in Healthcare. He is embedded in the Department of General Practice and Health Services Research at Heidelberg University Hospital. He is currently adjunct head of department and head of a MSc program at Heidelberg University. He holds degrees in sociology, medical sciences, and medical care research.

His research focuses on primary and ambulatory healthcare, and on implementation science concepts, such as tailored implementation, patient self-management, and provider networks. 

Michel Wensing has been a member of the Implementation Science editorial team since the journal started in 2006, and was co-Editor-in-Chief of that journal from 2012 to 2022, and remains involved as an Associate Editor.  Having been on the Editorial Board since its founding, he came an Associate Editor for Implementation Science Communications in 2023.

Rebecca Armstrong is the Executive Manager of Knowledge Translation & Impact at the Australian Institute for Family Studies, and has an appointment at the University of Melbourne where she is Director of Public Health Insight and the joint Co-ordinating Editor of Cochrane Public Health. Rebecca is a public health researcher with more than 10 years experience developing and evaluating knowledge translation projects. Rebecca holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne where she led the development of a cluster RCT in local government exploring the effectiveness of KT strategies. This work has informed a series of initiatives focused on facilitating evidence-informed public health practice for practitioners including the development of short courses and an evaluation of a large-scale KT platform for obesity prevention practitioners. Rebecca and her team have also developed a program of work to support researchers to develop KT plans. They have been working with research teams to develop KT plans and have developed a successful short course to build research capacity in this area.

Rebecca’s current roles focus on supporting researchers to develop and evaluate their own KT efforts and the development of products, including systematic reviews, to facilitate evidence-informed public health. At AIFS Rebecca is overseeing the development and implementation of an agency-wide KT strategy to support policy and practice in the social services sector.

Ana Baumann's research agenda focuses on identifying strategies to facilitate the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions in low-resource settings. Ana is the co-director of the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core (DIRC), a core from the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) at Washington University in St. Louis. The DIRC team provides methodological expertise to advance translational research to inform and move efficacious health practices from clinical knowledge to routine care. Through DIRC, she has supported several investigators as an implementation scientist in receiving federally funded funds to conduct studies aiming to accelerate the use of evidence-based interventions or guidelines in different settings of care. Ana is passionate about reducing disparities in healthcare delivery for vulnerable population in the U.S. and globally.

Justin Benzer is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School Psychiatry Department and the Implementation Science Core Chief at the VISN 17 Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  He is trained as an industrial/organizational psychologist and health services researcher. His research focuses on the intersection of organization science and implementation science. Justin is currently involved in several projects evaluating the implementation of integrated mental health and medical care, as well as several health services research projects testing how patient and provider factors affect integrated care. 

Dr Anna Bergström is an implementation scientist at the Uppsala Global Health Research on Implementation and Sustainability at the Dept of Women´s and Children´s Health at Uppsala University in Sweden and at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. Anna’s particular interest in implementation science lies in understanding how to build implementation capacity in systems that can manage wicked problems as well as how context influences change processes in healthcare systems. Anna coordinated the development of the Context Assessment for Community Health (COACH) tool in a large consortium of researchers from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Uganda, South Africa, Nicaragua and Canada. Previously, she has been involved in research in Nepal, Mozambique, Uganda and Tanzania aimed to improve maternal and neonatal health practices and implementation of evidence-based methods. Aside from her research, she is also working as an implementation expert at the Unit for Implementation and Evaluation at the Center for Epidemiology and Community medicine in Region Stockholm in Sweden where she contributes to building implementation capacity across health and welfare organisations in the Region. 

Lauren Clack is a Professor of Implementation Science in Health Care at the Medical Faculty, University of Zurich. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Zurich and a MSc in Applied Ergonomics (Human Factors Engineering) from the University of Nottingham.

From 2011 to 2020, she worked as a researcher and project leader, first at the University Hospitals of Geneva and then at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Zurich. She specializes in the application of implementation science methodology and human-centered design to improve the systematic integration of evidence-based infection prevention and patient safety interventions into care.

Sarah Gimbel, a Professor in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing, co-directs the Center for Global Health Nursing, and holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Global Health, all at the University of Washington. She is an established implementation researcher with extensive experience leading complex, multi-country implementation research studies in low and middle-income countries (LIMC), including Kenya, Mozambique and Peru. Her research expertise includes the development and testing of interventions to strengthen health systems and improve the reach and quality of health services. She has ongoing projects in Mozambique, Kenya, Peru, and Washington State and works in the areas of HIV/AIDS, hypertension, neglected tropical diseases and primary health care.

Dr Alice Grady is a behavioral researcher with The University of Newcastle. Her research aims to prevent chronic disease by putting robust evidence into practice within healthcare and community settings, such as childcare services. Alice’s research draws on the benefits of digital health interventions (web-based programs, smart phone apps etc) that allow evidence to be translated in a way that is easily understood by the public and can be scaled to reach more people. Alice is also a Program Manager with Hunter New England Population Health, where she manages an integrated research-practice team who provide support to over 400 childcare services located within the Hunter New England region, to implement healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices.

A medical Anthropologist by training, Professor Margaret Gyapong is Director of the Institute of Health Research (IHR) and Coordinator of the Centre for Health Policy and Implementation Research (CHPIR) at the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), Ghana. Under her leadership, the centre was designated as a WHO/TDR Satellite Training Centre for Implementation Research in 2018.

Prior to joining the university in 2017, she spent almost 25 years as a researcher in the Ghana Health Service and was foundation Director of the Dodowa Health Research Centre from 2005 to 2016, transforming it from a small research station to an internationally acclaimed research Centre. Her interests are in socio-cultural aspects of tropical diseases, implementation research, Health Systems,  maternal and child health.

Professor Gyapong is currently a member of the Sight Savers board of trustees, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute External Review Board, the task force for Global Health Campaign Effectiveness Advisory board, WHO Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) on Neglected tropical diseases, the WHO/AFRO Advisory Committee on Health Research and Development and advisor on capacity building and training in Malaria for the Havard TC Chan school of Public Health WHO rethinking malaria program.

She has in the recent past been member of the WHO Task force on Malaria Research Capability Strengthening in Africa, Vice chair, WHO/TDR Scientific Advisory Committee on Integrated Community Based Interventions, Co-Chair WHO/TDR Technical Review Group on social Science and Gender, Member Global Technical Strategy on Malaria steering group 2010-2013.

In 2017, she was one of 12 women across the world to receive the first Heroines of Health award for her work in drawing attention to the needs of women suffering from the consequences of Neglected tropical Disease. A year later she was profiled in TDR Global for some of her achievements in Implementation Research and work on Neglected tropical diseases. 

On International Women’s Day in March 2021, she was celebrated by WHO/TDR as one of 15 women who champion mentorship and collaboration among scientists tackling infectious diseases in low and middle income countries. In May of the same year she was ranked by the world Scientist and University Ranking 2021-AD Scientific Index 2021 as number 4 in the university of Health and Allied Sciences, number 13 in Ghana and number 550 in Africa. On October 18th 2021 she was adjudged the Most Outstanding Female Scientist by the EDCTP for her contribution, training and mentorship to reducing poverty related diseases.

In Academia, Professor Gyapong is full Professor of Applied Health Social Science at UHAS, and adjunct professor of Global Health at Georgetown University. She has 105 publications in peer reviewed journals to her credit. 

Whitney Irie, PhD, MSW is an Assistant Professor at Boston College’s School of Social Work. She is also an Adjunct Faculty member at The Fenway Institute in Boston, MA, and a lecturer on Population Medicine in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her primary research focuses on preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access and implementation, particularly for Black Women in the United States. Dr. Irie uses implementation science frameworks and methods to examine the effectiveness of evidence-based interventions designed to improve the competency and capacity for HIV prevention care provision in diverse clinical settings that serve Black women. 

Harriet Koorts is a Senior Research Fellow/Implementation Scientist in the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN) at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. She leads the Implementation and Translation research core within the institute. Harriet’s research focuses on the implementation and scale-up of public health interventions at a population level, including the use of systems methodologies to understand and evaluate effective scale up. She is involved as an implementation scientist in a number of state-wide trials testing the real-word implementation and effectiveness of physical activity and nutrition interventions at scale. Over the past 10 years, Harriet has held multiple positions in UK local government, the UK National Health Service (NHS) and academic institutions internationally, to implement and evaluate real-world initiatives to inform the commissioning of health promotion programs and delivery of clinical health services in practice.

Vikki Leone is Knowledge Translation Manager at the Centre for Community Child Health – a department of The Royal Children’s Hospital and a research group of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia.  Her current role focuses on working in partnership with clinicians and researchers to realise the potential of research evidence and enable innovation that advances, optimises and sustains efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of children.

Vikki has a background in knowledge translation, media and communications, and qualifications in education and implementation science. Her interests include how to build individual and organisational capacity for effective knowledge translation and implementation. Vikki and her team have undertaken research and piloted strategies within campus and community settings to strengthen efforts to inform policy and practice, and achieve greater research impact.

Dr. Jinghua Li is an Associate Professor at Department of Medical Statistics, School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University. Dr. Li received her PhD degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Master’s degree (in Global Health Policy) from the University of Tokyo, and Bachelor’s degree (in Building Science and Economics) from Tsinghua University. Her current research interests include two main areas. First, Application of implementation science in behavior and mental health, with a particular focus among vulnerable populations and sexual minorities. Second, development and application of mathematical models (e.g., compartmental models and agent-based models) to evaluate the epidemiological impact and cost-effectiveness of health interventions for infectious diseases, such as HIV, TB, and HBV. She has authored/co-authored about 60 publications in international peer-reviewed journals. She is the principle investigator of National Natural Science Foundation of China, China Medical Board, and Sun Yet-sen University 100 Talents Scheme.

Dr Jenny McSharry is a Chartered Psychologist and Registered Health Psychologist in the UK and a Registered Psychologist with the Psychological Society of Ireland. Jenny is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the National University of Ireland, Galway with responsibility for the teaching and research interface between the Departments of Psychology, Speech and Language Therapy and Occupational Therapy

Jenny is the Assistant Director of the Health Behaviour Change Research Group at National University of Ireland, Galway, an internationally recognised centre of excellence in health behaviour research and founder of the Irish Research Council funded IMPlementation science Research NeTwork (IMPRNT). At the Health Behaviour Change Research Group, Dr McSharry leads a programme of research that takes a systematic evidence-based approach to health behaviour change intervention development, evaluation and implementation into practice. Jenny also has methodological expertise in evidence synthesis and is an Evidence Synthesis Ireland Fellow.

Kenneth Mugwanya is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Global Health and Epidemiology at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on multidisciplinary studies of epidemiology and prevention of HIV and other STIs, implementation science, and antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) pharmacology in African populations, particularly among young women. He led key studies to quantify and interpret the risk and safety of oral TDF-based PrEP in African populations, which contributed directly to the development of clinical guidelines for use of PrEP in populations in Africa and globally. Current research focuses on clinical and pharmacologic studies to define optimal adherence and blood concentrations of antiretroviral-based PrEP medications in cisgender women and application of rigorous implementation science methods to catalyze integration and scale up of PrEP delivery in real-world public health systems in African settings. Kenneth trained as a physician at Makerere University Medical School, received his MS in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Case Western Reserve University, and a PhD in Epidemiology and post-doc training in Global Health Implementation Science from the University of Washington.

Dr Nicole Nathan is a health promotion research practitioner with Hunter New England Population Health (HNEPH) and The University of Newcastle. Since 2006 she has led the implementation and evaluation of Australia’s largest population-wide child obesity prevention service and research trials in community settings, in particular within schools (Good for Kids. Good for Life). Nicole has extensive experience in trialling interventions to improve uptake, implementation and scale-up of best practice healthy eating and physical activity guidelines. Her integrated research-practice role within Hunter New England Population Health has seen her lead policy relevant research facilitating the speed of adoption of research findings into practice both within the University and Local Health Service. Nicole is currently leading a number of large-scale school based physical activity implementation interventions with particular focus on the methodology of optimisation and sustainability. 

Dr Kalyani Nikhare, BDS, MPH, is a Research Fellow at the Public Health Foundation of India. She has experience working on several research projects for HIV, Mental Health, COVID-19 and Cardiovascular diseases. Her work focuses on a range of studies, such as implementation trial to integrate quality mental health services into primary health care centres, programme outcome assessment studies to guide healthcare system strengthening for HIV and non-communicable diseases, prospective observational cohort studies to assess long-term outcomes of COVID-19 infection, and quality improvement trials for secondary prevention among patients with cardiovascular diseases. She conducts qualitative research to understand the interplay of contextual factors, healthcare providers’, and service users’ experiences to improve service delivery and integrate evidence-based and sustainable interventions into health care systems. She has presented her research at various conferences and published research papers in leading journals. Kalyani’s research interests include the use of various implementation science frameworks and methods for intervention co-designing, process evaluation, and the integration of research findings into policy and practice.

Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Dr Rogério M. Pinto is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. Rogério has a degree in biological sciences, and trained as a psychiatric social worker; he spent more than a decade in clinical and community practice. He received his PhD in Social Work from Columbia University in 2003. His dissemination and implementation research applies community-based participatory research principles and best practices, in order to broadcast the voices of oppressed individuals and groups. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, and myriad other sources, his research has generated evidence on the positive impact of interprofessional collaboration on the delivery of evidence-based services (e.g. HIV and drug-use prevention and care) to marginalized racial/ethnic and sexual minorities in the United States and Brazil. Rogério also conducts art-based scholarly research, using autoethnographic methods. In 2015, after more than a decade at Columbia, Pinto came to the University of Michigan. That same year he premiered Marília, his one-person play about his older sister's death when she was a toddler, how it affected his family, and how it affected him growing up. Marília first played on New York City's Theatre Row, and was presented again in the winter of 2016 at the Vrystaat Kunstefees in Bloemfontein, South Africa. In 2020, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rogério reconceived Marília as a socially distanced installation performance titled Realm of the Dead. Through the Realm, Rogério more deeply investigates his marginalization as a gender non-confirming, mixed-race-ethnicity, Latinx immigrant. Exhibition and performances of Realm are part of the University of Michigan School of Social Work's celebration of its centennial.

Dr Malabika Sarker, MBBS, MPH, PhD is the Professor of the practice of behavioral and social science at Brown School of Public Health, Brown University, USA. Professor Sarker is an implementation researcher and a mixed-method expert. She is a physician with a Master's in Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University, the USA, and a Doctorate in Public Health from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. During her career, she has taught across four continents and has extensive research experience in Sub- Saharan Africa and Bangladesh. She has been awarded over US$ 10 million in research/capacity-building grants and has published over 13 peer-reviewed articles and five book chapters. She is also the international advisory board member of The Lancet Global Health, World Federation Public Health Association, Medical Research Council UK, National Institute of Health Research UK, Chair of the Advisory Board of the HRP Alliance for Research Capacity Strengthening (RCS), and an Evaluation Advisory Committee Member of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Professor Sarker was awarded the “Heroines of Health” global award in 2018. Before joining Brown SPH, Professor Sarker was the Associate Dean & Professor of BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health (JPGSPH), BRAC University. Professor Sarker founded the Institute review board (IRB) and the Center of Excellence of Science of Implementation & Scale-Up (SISU) at BRAC JPGSPH, Bangladesh. She also served as the Acting Dean in 2015 and Research Advisor for BRAC University in 2019-2021.

Emma Thomas is a Research Fellow within the Centre for Health Services Research at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Her current research focuses on using telehealth within the care and management of people with cardiovascular disease and other chronic diseases to enhance self-management and reduce barriers to access.

Emma completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in the School of Population and Global Health as an NHMRC Postgraduate Scholar. Her thesis aimed to understand how the evidence-practice gap in cardiac rehabilitation can be reduced in Australia through enhanced monitoring and evaluation. Underpinning her work more broadly is an interest in scaling-up effective interventions, monitoring the quality of their delivery and ensuring equitable provision of health services. 

Emma has also worked across various other research groups including at the University of Oxford at a WHO Collaborating Centre focused on population approaches for non-communicable disease (NCD) prevention, the Non-Communicable Disease Unit at the University of Melbourne, and a Centre of Research Excellence in Aphasia Rehabilitation (University of Queensland).

Dr Elaine Toomey is a Lecturer in Evidence-Based Healthcare in the University of Galway. She is also a Health Research Board 'Applying Research into Policy and Practice' Research Fellow. She is a Cochrane Ireland Research Associate and a member of both the Centre for Health Research Methods and the Health Behaviour Change Research Group. Elaine is a Chartered Physiotherapist and obtained her PhD from University College Dublin (2016) and her MSc and BSc from the University of Limerick (2012, 2010). Until April 2020, Elaine was Associate Director of Cochrane Ireland within Evidence Synthesis Ireland and led the implementation of the Evidence Synthesis Ireland Fellowship Scheme. Previously, Elaine was a Health Research Board (HRB) Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement Post-doctoral Research Fellow (2016-2019), where she co-led the development of a complex behaviour change childhood obesity prevention intervention, with a specific focus on process and implementation outcomes. Elaine was a Visiting Researcher at Hunter New England Population Health Service/Newcastle University (Newcastle, Australia) in 2018, the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine in Western University (Ontario, Canada) in 2018, and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (Ontario, Canada) in 2017 and 2018. Elaine's research has two main strands - 1) utilising health behaviour change for chronic disease prevention and management, and 2) optimising health research methods to implement research into health policy and practice. She has specific methodological expertise in evidence synthesis, process evaluation and fidelity/adaptation of behaviour change interventions.

Paul Wilson is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Primary Care and Health Services Research, University of Manchester and Implementation Science research theme lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester.

Paul has a background in evidence synthesis with research interests that are focused around evidence informed decision making in health policy and practice. His interests include rapid review methodologies, the development and evaluation of methods to increase the uptake of research based knowledge to inform decisions relating to service delivery, redesign, disinvestment, and the evaluation of service innovation in health systems.