Advancing and Strengthening the Study of Social Networks in Community-Level Dissemination and Implementation Research

The dissemination and implementation (D&I) of evidence at the community-level is critical to improve health and advance health equity. Social networks are considered essential to D&I efforts, but there lacks clarity regarding how best to study and leverage networks. We examined networks in community-level D&I frameworks to characterize the range of network actors,activities, and change approaches. We conducted a narrative review of 66 frameworks. Among frameworks that explicitly addressed networks—i.e., elaborated on network characteristics,structure, and/or activities—we extracted and synthesized network concepts using descriptive statistics and narrative summaries. A total of 24 (36%) frameworks explicitly addressed networks. Commonly included actors were implementers, adopters/decision makers, innovation developers, implementation support professionals, and innovation recipients. Network activities included the exchange of resources, knowledge, trust, and norms. Most network-explicit frameworks characterized ties within and across organizations and considered element(s) of network structure—e.g., size, centrality, density. The most common network change strategy was identifying individuals to champion D&I efforts. We discuss opportunities to expand network inquiry in D&I science, including: understanding networks as implementation determinants, leveraging network change approaches as implementation strategies, and exploring network change as an implementation outcome.