Sessions at The Priester National Extension Health Conference with handout on Thursday 12th April

Margaret Farrell
Office of Partnership and Dissemination Initiatives
Office of Communications and Education
National Cancer Institute

Alissa Gallagher
E. Peyton Purcell
Madeline La Porta
Cynthia Vinson
Michael Sanchez
Natalie Zeigler
Candace D. Maynard
Theresa Devine
National Cancer Institute
Bethesda, MD, USA.

Disseminating and implementing evidence-based interventions require an active role beyond static web 1.0 resources. Researchers, community practitioners, and government partnerships must develop innovative ways to address the pressing issue of translating research into practice. The National Cancer Institute (NCI)’s Research-to-Reality (R2R) community of practice is an important aspect of the ongoing national dialogue about how practitioners and researchers can work together to move "programs that work" into the communities where they are needed most.

Since its launch in March 2010, the R2R site (researchtoreality.cancer.gov) has convened and engaged researchers and cancer control practitioners in an ongoing dialogue around identifying, adapting and implementing research-tested interventions and evidence-based programs and policies into practice.

R2R leverages a variety of applications in its work to develop a community of practice around this essential work. In order to engage researchers and cancer control practitioners, the NCI began and sustains a series of monthly “cyber-seminars” designed to highlight real world programs and initiate discussions between researchers and practitioners. This was an essential first step toward creating a community of practice.

Through ongoing discussions, featured content and partner highlights, R2R convenes stakeholders at the local, state, tribal, jurisdictional and national levels and encourages them to share their considerable knowledge and experience in addressing the burden of cancer.

As of February 2012, there are more than 800 registered members of the R2R community. More than 800 researchers and practitioners register for the monthly cyber-seminars and the site hosts more than 9.500 page views and 8,000 site visits on an average month. The level of engagement on the site, measured by time spent on the site, questions submitted via the cyber-seminars and discussions initiated and followed has continued to grow at a steady pace.

This presentation will outline work and findings to date of R2R’s ability to build the capacity of the public health workforce to reduce the gap between research and practice.