Developing a Community Toolkit? Let RE-AIM “Aim” you in the Right Direction!- July 2017

Developing a Community Toolkit? Let RE-AIM “Aim” you in the Right Direction!

This month we would like to highlight Zubkoff and colleagues (2017). Guided by the RE-AIM framework, Zubkoff and colleagues developed a toolkit to assist rural community cancer centers who desire to implement early palliative care for patients with newly diagnosed advanced cancer and their family caregivers.

This study resulted in four instruments being developed to measure the implementation of ENABLE (Educate, Nurture, Advise, Before Life Ends). Designed for rural-dwelling patients, ENABLE is an early palliative care telehealth model that can be easily integrated with usual oncology care at the time of an advance cancer diagnosis.

The 4 Instruments used to measure the implementation of ENABLE were:

1.     The ENABLE RE-AIM Self-Assessment Tool to assess Reach, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance

2.     The ENABLE General Organizational Index (GOI) to assess institutional implementation

3.     An implementation cost tool

4.      A survey to evaluate oncology clinicians’ perceptions of early concurrent oncology palliative care

To our knowledge, this is the first time the RE-AIM framework has been adapted to measure the implementation of early palliative care. As Zubkoff and colleagues move forward, their goal is to evaluate the feasibility of using the toolkit in clinical practice and to establish program sustainability at the four community cancer centers.

Hats off to Zubkoff and colleagues for their great work!

P.S. We know school is out for the summer, but please take a few minutes to take our RE-AIM self-assessment quiz! How else will you know if you are aiming in the right direction?

Until next time,

Ramine Alexander and the RE-AIM Workgroup