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Background: Inequities exist in delivery of helpful, effective healthcare interventions. One emerging paradigm to address these inequities is to engage consumers of healthcare (e.g., patients, families, caregivers) in the implementation process. There are not enough examples or standards of successful consumer engagement in implementation, which limits clarity on processes other implementers could be using. Implementation scientists need a clear foundation from which to build processes or strategies with more specificity to engage consumers in healthcare settings. Methods: We conducted an environmental scan of three data sources: archived webinars, literature review articles, and interviews/observations with implementers who engaged consumers in efforts to introduce new programs and practices in healthcare settings. We described examples of consumer engagement in implementation efforts, categorized recurring challenges, and identified promising solutions to those challenges. We extracted and categorized data using a coding template informed by frameworks from implementation science and stakeholder engagement literature.Results: We found 26 examples of consumer engagement in implementation of healthcare service delivery (through research or clinical practice), mostly in the United States. Most implementers engaged consumers using a medium level of intensity. These projects described nine recurring challenges; the three most frequently identified were: 1) recruiting consumers representative of actual patients served in the healthcare system; 2) ensuring processes that allow for equitable communication among all stakeholders; and 3) retaining consumers in implementation efforts. We also matched promising solutions described by implementers to recurring challenges in consumer engagement in implementation.Conclusion: We clarified the foundation of who, how, and where a sample of implementers are engaging consumers in healthcare implementation initiatives. A notable finding is implementers rarely specified if they were targeting a patient population experiencing healthcare inequities. |
