Registration for the main D&I meeting is not required to attend one of the workshops below. If you would like to register for only a workshop and not the main meeting, select a "Workshop Only" ticket when you register. If you would like to register for the main meeting as well as a workshop, select "2026 D&I Conference Ticket" when you register. You may then select your workshop when prompted.
PLEASE NOTE: All workshops require an additional charge, regardless of whether you register for the main meeting or not. You may only register for ONE pre-conference workshop.
All workshops will be held Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on Sunday, December 13.
Dissemination and Implementation in Embedded Pragmatic Trials: Science-Powered Strategies to Sustain and Spread Effective Interventions
Time: 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET
Price: $295
This workshop will introduce concepts in the design, conduct, and implementation of pragmatic clinical trials embedded in healthcare systems, with a focus on methods relevant to health services researchers. Embedded pragmatic trials are randomized trials that are conducted within healthcare systems and that use streamlined procedures and existing infrastructure to answer important questions for patients, clinicians, and healthcare system leaders. These trials have the potential to inform policy and practice with broadly generalizable, high-quality evidence at lower cost and with greater efficiency than traditional clinical trials. Thinking about intervention adoption and sustainment (or deimplementation) early is key to the success of these trials. The workshop will introduce the investigative opportunities for embedded pragmatic trials, including strategies for integrating implementation research methods into the design and conduct of pragmatic trials, with the goal of generating real-world evidence to inform practice and policy across systems and populations. The workshop will highlight dissemination and implementation challenges investigators face when conducting pragmatic trials in large, complex healthcare systems and will share lessons from implementation science for maximizing the ability of pragmatic trials to improve the health of individuals and communities. Firsthand experiences and case studies from the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory will illustrate the topics presented. The workshop will include discussion with panelists and hands-on exercises that apply knowledge from the workshop.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify areas of synergy between embedded pragmatic clinical trials and implementation research.
- Introduce participants to the unique characteristics and challenges of designing, conducting, and implementing pragmatic clinical trials embedded in diverse healthcare systems, and describe opportunities for integrating implementation research methods into these trials.
- Increase the capacity of health services researchers to address important clinical questions with embedded pragmatic clinical trials, and share lessons
Translating Research for Policy Impact
Time: 1:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET
Price: $75
This workshop will cover best practices for communicating with policymakers about real-world impacts and evaluation design. It will include interactive presentations and practice sessions translating research and findings from congressionally mandated studies, published results, and participants’ own work.
Narrative As Implementation Infrastructure: Applying Health Humanities and Graphic Medicine to Advance Research Dissemination
Time: 1:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET
Price: $75
Discover how narrative, history, and graphic medicine can strengthen dissemination and implementation (D&I) efforts. Using HIV/AIDS as a case study, this interactive workshop introduces health humanities as practical tools for improving audience engagement, trust, and research uptake. Participants will explore historical materials from the National Library of Medicine, examine successful dissemination products, create a brief visual narrative through a hands-on graphic medicine exercise and apply these approaches to real-world dissemination challenges from their own work. Attendees will leave with a draft narrative-based dissemination strategy, practical communication tools, and new approaches for translating evidence into action. No previous artistic experience needed.
Applying the Core Function/Form Framework to Achieve Fidelity and Local Tailoring of Complex Health Interventions
Time: 1:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET
Price: $75
This workshop presents the Core Function/Form (CF/F) approach for conceptualizing, delivering, evaluating and documenting complex health interventions (CHIs), including health promotion and healthcare delivery programs and implementation strategy bundles. The workshop provides guidance in using the approach from a co-creation perspective, presenting tools for developing a project-specific core function/form matrix, using the matrix to guide tailoring of CHI features to local contexts while maintaining fidelity and internal validity, and facilitating synthesis of findings from multiple projects. The workshop explains the relationship between the CF/F approach and legacy concepts used in CHI research such as core components and manualized interventions.
Dissemination In the Age of AI: Communication and Design Tools at Your Fingertips
Time: 1:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET
Price: $75
Researchers and practitioners will learn to use AI-powered tools to expand the reach, impact, and accessibility of their research. Through hands-on activities using platforms such as Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Canva, and NotebookLM, participants will transform their own abstracts or publications into audience-tailored dissemination products, including plain-language summaries, visual abstracts, infographics, social media content, and more. Participants will gain practical skills in prompt engineering, audience tailoring, ethical AI use, and content quality assurance. Attendees will leave with an AI-assisted dissemination product, reusable prompt templates, and a practical workflow for applying AI to future dissemination efforts. No previous AI experience is required.
Developing Causal Pathway Diagrams to Identify Outcomes and Mechanisms of Implementation Strategies
Time: 1:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET
Price: $75
Implementation science emphasizes the importance of understanding not only whether implementation strategies work but how they produce desired outcomes. As highlighted by Lewis and colleagues (2022), understanding how implementation strategies work can facilitate identification of barriers and facilitators that strategies effectively address while fostering awareness of the conditions under which strategies operate. Implementation strategies can be optimized by strengthening components that activate mechanisms to overcome barriers while eliminating components that do not. The first step in identifying mechanisms of action is specifying implementation strategy characteristics and articulating how strategies influence implementation outcomes and clinical or behavioral outcomes. However, many researchers struggle to describe the pathways linking implementation strategies (e.g., HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP training), implementation outcomes (e.g., PrEP acceptability and adoption), and downstream clinical or behavioral outcomes (e.g., PrEP adherence). Causal pathway diagrams can help researchers delineate implementation processes and evaluation pathways. Specifically, these diagrams improve our understanding of implementation strategies, inform evaluation and adaptive refinement, and clarify why and how strategies succeed or fail. This interactive workshop will be presented by the NIDA-funded Collaborative Network to End the HIV Epidemic and Address Addiction in the Criminal Justice System (CONNECT), which includes eight research hubs, the EngageData Center, and the patient engagement research center (INTERACT). This network conducts and supports research to improve access to and uptake of HIV prevention, HIV treatment, and medications for opioid use disorder among individuals involved in the criminal legal system. The workshop provides participants with a practical, step-by-step process for developing causal pathway diagrams that clarify relationships among implementation strategies, mechanisms, proximal outcomes, and distal implementation, clinical, or behavioral outcomes.
Participants will:
- Specify implementation strategies;
- Learn from real-world examples demonstrating how causal pathway diagrams strengthen implementation strategy evaluation;
- Distinguish proximal outcomes activated by mechanisms from distal implementation outcomes; and
- Develop their own causal pathway diagrams. Dr. Lee-Winn, from NIDA, will introduce the workshop by discussing the importance of understanding implementation strategy mechanisms from the NIH perspective
Dr. Akiba, from the EngageData Center, will provide an overview of causal pathway diagrams and discuss identifying proximal outcomes activated by mechanisms and distal implementation outcomes that support clinical and behavioral outcomes. Drs. Hunt, Flath, Proffitt, and Vincenzo will each present a causal pathway diagram illustrating the hypothesized pathways of implementation strategies designed to improve HIV and substance use disorder outcomes. During the hands-on session, participants should come prepared with a defined implementation strategy and primary clinical or behavioral outcomes targeted by an intervention. Working individually and in small groups, participants will specify their implementation strategy and develop a causal pathway diagram depicting how selected proximal outcomes may mediate the relationship between implementation strategy delivery and the intended implementation and clinical or behavioral outcomes. We will also depict moderators and pre-conditions of mechanism activation. CONNECT faculty will provide feedback throughout the workshop to help participants refine their diagrams. Participants will leave the workshop with a diagram tailored to their research and an implementation measurement and methods guide to support future mechanism-focused implementation research.
Facilitating NIH-Funded Dissemination and Implementation Research: Navigating the Current Environment
Time: 1:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET
Price: $75
Led by NIH staff across multiple Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs), this workshop is designed for D&I researchers familiar with the NIH funding process who want to understand what they need to know right now to develop competitive applications. The workshop unpacks the NIH Unified Strategy and MAHA Strategic Initiatives; examines what Gold Standard Science — and the Simplified Review Framework — mean for D&I applications; and offers a forward-looking discussion of cutting-edge D&I methods and designs. Participants will engage in a mock study section, structured small-group discussions with NIH staff, and real-time exploration of the current funding landscape.