Enhancing Dissemination through Marketing and Distribution Systems: A Vision for Public Health

The long time lag between discovery of new knowledge and its application in public health and clinical settings is well documented and described in other chapters in this book. Along this evidence-to-practice cycle, there is no shortage of evidence-based approaches and empirically supported programs to enhance the public's health, but there are few systems in place to bring these discoveries to the attention of practitioners and into use in practice settings. In business, the process of taking a product or service from the point of development to the point of use by consumers is carried out by a marketing and distribution system. In previous work, it was argued that marketing and distribution responsibilities are largely unassigned, underemphasized, and/or underfunded for disseminating effective public health programs, and without them widespread adoption of evidence-based approaches is unlikely. This chapter proposes three specific components of a marketing and distribution system for evidence-based public health practices, and describes how the potential benefits of such a system could be evaluated through dissemination research.