Is RE-AIM Walking the Walk?

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Jan. 1, 2015 – Welcome to RE-AIM.org!

In December, Jo Ann Shoup and her colleagues published a social network analysis of RE-AIM publications between 1999 (when the first RE-AIM article was published) until the end of 2012. They found 144 articles and ran a number of network analyses to show that the framework has broad reach which has increased significantly over the previous 14 years. Shoup also highlighted that there is an active RE-AIM ‘invisible college’ of investigators studying broad topics from physical activity to heart disease. These investigators have applied RE-AIM to randomized controlled trials, program evaluation, and prospective cohort designs.

The authors of the article also made a couple of recommendations:
  1. To create a research platform for the RE-AIM framework to assure that it is adopted and embedded as a regular practice, thus increasing its diffusion and spread in the literature.
  2. To include a core group of RE-AIM mentors to “bridge knowledge” between established interventionists and more junior researchers through use of RE- AIM in publications.
  3. To stimulate diffusion of RE-AIM in the literature through its use in new areas, such as health policy or grant reporting.
  4. To apply social network analysis to other translational or behavioral medicine theories and frameworks to determine if the RE-AIM findings are replicable and generalizable to other frameworks or groups of authors.

As we get 2015 rolling, we hope this can come as a call to action of the “invisible RE-AIM college”… Both the keep up the great science and to expand beyond our typical colleagues with a goal to continue moving translational science forward with a balanced focus on internal and external validity.

Cheers,

Paul Estabrooks and the RE-AIM Workgroup