Abstract
In public health, implementation research is done to improve access to interventions that have been shown to work but have not reached many of the people who could beneft from them. Researchers identify practical problems facing public health programmes and aim to fnd solutions that improve health outcomes. In operational research, routinely-collected programme data are used to uncover ways of delivering more effective, efcient and equitable health care. As implementation research can address many types of questions, many research designs may be appropriate. Existing reporting guidelines partially cover the methods used in implementation and operational research, so we ran a consultation through the World Health Organization (WHO), the Alliance for Health Policy & Systems Research (AHPSR) and the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) and developed guidelines to facilitate the funding, conduct, review and publishing of such studies. Our intention is to provide a practical reference for funders, researchers, policymakers, implementers, reviewers and editors working with implementation and operational research. This is an evolving feld, so we plan to monitor the use of these guidelines and develop future versions as required.
Conclusions
A major challenge in the development of reporting guidelines for implementation and operational research is that this research is governed by the nature of the questions rather than by specific methods or designs. As such, the guidelines presented in this paper build upon and bring together a range of existing guidelines. Te process of developing these reporting guidelines has brought people with different expertise and perspectives to the debate and helped build consensus. It is hoped that the present guidelines will be a useful reference, but further discussion and development will be required to overcome challenges in this evolving feld.