Disseminating Evidence From Research and Practice

To prevent obesity, public health practitioners need to address the behaviors that increase risk, most notably physical inactivity and poor diet.

Abstract

In Brief This article reports on a Centers for Disease Control and Preventionfunded Center for Training and Research Translations overall model for translating evidence to practice.Only a limited number of effective obesity prevention interventions are available for use in public health. One approach to expanding the base of available evidence is to draw on interventions developed in both research and practice (ie, practice-based interventions). Because they were developed and evaluated by practitioners, practice-based interventions often have the advantage of being more feasible to implement and more compatible with practice as compared with researcher-developed interventions. They therefore offer a valuable source of "best available evidence" to guide practice. The present article reports on the methods (selection criteria and process) that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–funded Center for Training and Research Translation uses to identify and review research and practice-based evidence to guide obesity prevention.