Efficacy And Effectiveness Transition Summary

In the article "Why Don’t We See More Translation of Health Promotion Research to Practice? Rethinking the Efficacy-to-Effectiveness Transition," the authors, Russell Glasgow, Edward Lichtenstein, and Alfred Marcus explain their opinion about the imperfect translation of health promotion and behavior research findings into practice. Their article addresses the traditional assumption that “the best candidates for effectiveness studies—and later dissemination—are interventions that prove successful in certain types of efficacy research.” In addition, recommendations are proposed to diminish this disconnect by concentrating on the logic behind the design of efficacy and effectiveness trials.
Efficacy and Effectiveness Trials
The authors refer to the formative papers by Flay (1986) and Greenwald and Cullen
(1985) to establish a semantic distinction between these two research traditions. According to Flay, efficacy trials typically enroll homogeneous populations because subjects who are uncharacteristic (i.e., exhibiting confounding variables and comorbidities) may respond differently to the treatment. Because the focus of an efficacy trial is to determine causal associations within a narrowly defined target population, it is expected that the controls will be maintained through strictly standardized programs.
Conversely, …show more content…
The product of these dimensions is the public health impact score, which can serve as a quantitative measure against which to compare other