Overview of Framework

RE-AIM was originally developed as a framework for consistent reporting of research results and later used to organize reviews of the existing literature on health promotion and disease management in different settings.  The acronym stands for Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance which together determine public health impact. Since the original paper in 1999, there have been approximately 100 publications on RE-AIM by a variety of authors in fields as diverse as aging, cancer screening, dietary change, physical activity, medication adherence, health policy, environmental change, chronic illness self-management, well-child care, eHealth, worksite health promotion, women's health, smoking cessation, quality improvement, weight loss, diabetes prevention, and practice-based research.

More recently, RE-AIM has been used to translate research into practice and to help plan programs and improve their chances of working in "real-world" settings. The framework has also been used to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to health promotion and chronic disease self-management-such as in-person counseling, group education classes, telephone counseling, and internet resources. The overall goal of the RE-AIM framework is to encourage program planners, evaluators, readers of journal articles, funders, and policy-makers to pay more attention to essential program elements including external validity that can improve the sustainable adoption and implementation of effective, generalizable, evidence-based interventions.

Applying the RE-AIM Framework