Website
http://activelivingresearch.org/annual-conference-2015
Details
The theme of the 2015 conference, “The Science of Policy Implementation”, explores the process of taking scientific findings from the research field of active living to inform policies, then ensuring the policies are put into practice to increase population-level physical activity. Policies to promote active living in communities and schools are becoming common, but these policies are often not implemented as intended or not implemented at all. Every policy, planning, or programmatic intervention needs to go through a process of implementation. In part because of implementation, a policy drawn in Capitol Hill, or a State Capitol, may end up looking very different when it reaches a local main street. For example, engineers, government officials, private businesses, claimant groups, and citizens at large all have different perspectives about why a state policy on complete streets should be applied very differently across municipalities and regions. Despite differences in the policy process across countries, there is also much to learn from international experiences. We have come to understand that the process of implementation plays an important role in determining the success of interventions. Implementation also brings together the science and the practice. Implementation science needs to be applied to active living. What predicts which policies are implemented well? What strategies can practitioners apply to improve policy implementation? How can advocates monitor the quality of implementation? With a growing body of research around policy implementation, the conference theme this year recognizes the importance of policy implementation for active living research and practice.