By Jen Uscher, special to the AAMC Reporter
While Adithya Cattamanchi, M.D., was completing his postdoctoral fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, he discovered that he wanted more formal training in areas like biostatistics and study design. He thought advanced training would improve the quality of his research on tuberculosis.
“As my research career evolved, I realized more and more that I wanted to be involved in taking practices that had good evidence behind them and understanding why they weren’t being adopted in routine health care settings," Cattamanchi said.
[Implementation Science] is about how you can make things work in the real world.Jess Waldura, MD, associate adjunct professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF School of Medicine
Cattamanchi enrolled in the implementation science track of the master’s degree program in clinical research at UCSF. The skills he gained in the program, which he completed in 2010, helped him successfully apply for an R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). With that funding, he is developing and testing a strategy to increase provider uptake of guidelines to evaluate patients suspected of having tuberculosis in Uganda.
Like Cattamanchi, a growing number of clinicians are seeking training in implementation science—a field that focuses on how to promote the adoption of proven interventions in everyday practice. Training opportunities have expanded over the past 10 years and now include certificate and degree programs, fellowships, and shorter-term options like seminars and workshops.