Meet the Editor: An Interview with Bo Kim, our new Associate Editor for Implementation Science Communications
Published in Healthcare & Nursing, Social Sciences, and Sustainability
Bo Kim, Ph.D., is an investigator at the Center for Health Optimization and Implementation Research (CHOIR) at the VA Boston Healthcare System and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She serves as multiple principal investigator of the VA Behavioral Health and Bridge Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) Programs. Dr. Kim’s research focuses on improving the quality and sustainability of health and related services through implementation science. Her work emphasizes multi-level implementation strategies, implementation mechanisms, and mixed-methods evaluation to advance the uptake and sustainment of evidence-based practices in complex health systems. She conducts research across areas including behavioral health care, legal and social services addressing social determinants of health, and quality improvement initiatives within learning health systems. Drawing on approaches from systems science and health systems engineering, her work aims to strengthen service delivery and health outcomes for Veterans and other underserved populations.
The following is an interview between Elvin Geng and Roman Xu, Editors-in-Chief of Implementation Science Communications, and Bo.
Elvin: Bo, thank you so much for joining the journal as an AE! Your work has shaped how this field thinks about measurement and support for implementation in fundamental ways. You advanced Matrixed Multiple Case Study (MMCS) methodology for example — which is a really innovative approach to cross-case analysis that lets researchers draw structured comparisons across complex implementation contexts.
Roman: We would love for you to say a word or two about MMCS: what gap were you trying to solve when you developed it, and what has surprised you about how the research community has ended up using it?
Bo: The Matrixed Multiple Case Study (MMCS) method grew out of a challenge many implementation researchers face when studying programs across multiple sites. Case studies allow us to understand local context deeply, but they don’t always provide a clear structure for learning systematically across sites.
MMCS was designed to support what I like to call structured cross-site learning. The matrixed approach aims to preserve the richness of individual cases while organizing insights across sites and analytic dimensions so researchers can identify patterns in how implementation unfolds.
More broadly, the approach hopes to reflect a methodological need in the field: tools that allow us to balance contextual depth with systematic comparison across complex implementation settings. What has been most rewarding is seeing researchers adapt the method beyond its original context – for example, using it to facilitate cross-site learning in learning health systems and generate insights that travel across diverse implementation environments.
Elvin: I noted that you are currently serving as Board President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC). SIRC plays such an important connective role in our field. What drew you to that leadership, and what are you hoping to move the needle on during your tenure?
Bo: One of the things that makes SIRC special is that it intentionally brings together people working across the entire evidence-to-practice continuum – including and beyond researchers, practitioners, health system leaders, and trainees. Implementation science is inherently collaborative, and SIRC has played an important role in building that shared intellectual community.
During my tenure, one priority has been strengthening SIRC as a space where different parts of the implementation ecosystem can learn from one another. This includes supporting initiatives that highlight emerging areas of the field, expanding opportunities for trainees and early-career scholars, and building infrastructure that allows implementation researchers and practitioners to collaborate more effectively.
I’m particularly excited about efforts that foster conversations around implementation in complex service ecosystems, including cross-sector work that spans health care, social services, and community systems.
Roman: As you step into the associate editor role at ISC, where do you see the biggest white spaces in the current literature? What kinds of manuscripts are you hoping to champion?
Bo: One area where I see substantial opportunity is research that examines implementation across service sectors, not just within a single health system. Increasingly, interventions that influence health outcomes involve collaborations among and beyond health care organizations, social services, housing programs, and legal services.
I often think of this emerging area as cross-sector implementation science. Many drivers of health, such as housing instability or economic insecurity, sit outside the traditional boundaries of health care, yet most of our implementation frameworks still focus primarily within health systems.
I would be especially excited to see manuscripts that examine how implementation unfolds within these interconnected service ecosystems and how cross-sector partnerships can support more equitable outcomes for underserved populations.
Elvin: If you had to name one conceptual or methodological shift you would like to see the field make in the next five years, what would it be — and why?
Bo: One shift I would love to see is deeper integration between implementation science and systems thinking. Many of the interventions we study operate within complex service ecosystems involving multiple organizations, policies, and funding streams.
Implementation studies often focus on individual programs or interventions, but understanding how those efforts interact with broader systems is increasingly important. Approaches drawn from systems science and engineering can help us examine feedback loops, cross-sector dynamics, and unintended consequences that might otherwise remain invisible.
Advancing this kind of systems-informed implementation research could help the field generate insights that are not only scientifically rigorous but also more actionable for leaders working to improve complex service systems.
Roman: What is a paper you have read recently in implementation science that excited you, and why?
Bo: A recent paper that I found particularly exciting is the Measurement Roadmap article by Martinez and colleagues (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43477-025-00189-z).
One persistent challenge in implementation science is that strong measurement is essential for learning from implementation efforts, yet selecting appropriate measures can be surprisingly difficult for practitioners. The Measurement Roadmap provides a practical guide that helps implementation teams navigate that process – from identifying relevant theoretical constructs to evaluating the psychometric and pragmatic qualities of measures.
What I especially appreciate about the paper is its emphasis on making implementation science more usable for real-world teams. That focus on practical decision-making resonates strongly with efforts to support learning health systems and structured cross-site learning.
Elvin: Anything else you would like us to know about you?
Bo: One thing people may not know about me is that I’m a big animal enthusiast – I’ve always enjoyed learning about wildlife and the ecosystems animals inhabit. It’s something that reminds me how interconnected different parts of a system can be.
In many ways, that perspective carries over into how I think about implementation science. The interventions we study don’t operate in isolation; they function within complex service ecosystems involving and not limited to health systems, community organizations, and social service providers.
Going forward, I intend for my work to increasingly focus on understanding how implementation unfolds within these interconnected environments, particularly when collaborations span multiple sectors such as health care, social services, and community systems.
Ultimately, I’m excited about a future where implementation science helps complex systems learn – across sites, across sectors, and across disciplines – how to better support the people they serve.
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Before joining Springer Nature in 2021, Tamara completed an MBio in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Warwick and now manages a portfolio of fully open access journals focused on women's health and implementation science. In addition, she chairs the Springer Nature SDG3 (Good Health and Well-Being) working group.
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Implementation Science Communications
An official companion journal to Implementation Science and a forum to publish research relevant to the systematic study of approaches to foster uptake of evidence based practices and policies that affect health care delivery and health outcomes, in clinical, organizational, or policy contexts.
What are SDG Topics?
An introduction to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Topics and their role in highlighting sustainable development research.
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Learning From the Past and Shaping the Future
Implementation Science has published 2,197 papers since its inception in 2006 (as of May 27, 2026). Implementation Science Communications has published 938 papers since it began in 2019 (also as of May 27, 2026). In addition to papers published in these two journals, a larger number of papers focusing on implementation science in health care have been published in other journals over the last 20 years, conservatively around 22,300. This is based on a PubMed search using a specific search string[1], conducted on May 27, 2026. It is important to note that landmark papers in the field were published before 2006. Our purpose in marking this anniversary is to reflect on the field as a whole.
While much of the growth in the literature has come from high-income countries, there has been an increase in the number and scope of papers from lower and middle-income countries, fueling the overall growth.
Arguably, the growth in the literature and underlying research studies shows that the science and practice of implementation have moved from the periphery to mainstream health research. We are interested in papers that document and analyze the change over the last couple of decades—although the history of the field prior to 2006 is also of interest—and propose how this shapes the future of the field. This may be based on bibliographic or citation analysis, surveys among researchers, or other sources. Papers that only review the past, without analysis and future direction, will not be seen as responding to this call.
Examples of topics include, but are not limited to:
- Content analysis or systematic reviews of empirical publications from Implementation Science and/or Implementation Science Communications
- Content analysis of editorials and research agenda-setting articles from both journals, including papers focusing on implementation science published in other journals
- Bibliographic/citation analysis of publications over the 20 years of IS, including other papers published in other journals
- Analyses of geographic, disciplinary, authorship, funding, or institutional patterns in implementation science
Submissions should include critical interpretive analysis of existing literature and provide new insights, ideas, and thoughts from reflection on the existing literature.
This Collection welcomes submissions of a range of article types. Should you wish to submit to this Collection, please read the submission guidelines of the journal you are submitting to, i.e., Implementation Science or Implementation Science Communications, to confirm that the type is accepted by the journal you are submitting to.
Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission systems in Implementation Science or Implementation Science Communications. During the submission process, you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection. Please select "Learning From the Past and Shaping the Future" from the dropdown menu.
Articles will undergo the standard peer-review process of the journal in which they are considered, Implementation Science or Implementation Science Communications, and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.
The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions that they handle through the peer-review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.
[1] ("Implementation Science"[Mesh] OR "implementation science"[tiab] OR "implementation research"[tiab] OR "dissemination and implementation"[tiab] OR "translation science"[tiab] OR "knowledge translation"[tiab]) AND 2006:2026[dp]
Publishing Model: Open Access
Deadline: Mar 09, 2027
Breaking Frameworks: Revisiting, Extending, Integrating, and Theorizing Implementation Frameworks
The field of implementation science has amassed a large number of frameworks3,4,5. These are sometimes also called models, but because the term “model” is used in many other contexts in research, we will use the term “framework.” While many of these frameworks express a goal of supporting research in the implementation of evidence-based practices and programs, researchers and especially new entrants to the field continue to express confusion and uncertainty about how to use existing frameworks and which to use for what purposes. New frameworks are often developed without clarity about how they fit within the existing corpus of frameworks.
Despite the large number of frameworks 4, their use often reflects a lack of deep understanding of the content of the frameworks. Implementation researchers often describe frustration with existing frameworks while continuing to use them. A major issue is that once published in a peer-reviewed venue, there is no clear path to suggest changes or updates to the frameworks. A few, such as the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR)6, the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework7,8, and the RE-AIM framework9, have been updated through processes determined by a relatively small group of researchers10; others remain essentially fixed as they were published, or updated once but not again11,12. This can lead to reification of the frameworks in their original form. These issues may constitute a major “sticking point” for advancing the science of implementation, as well as contributing to complexity for implementation practitioners who use frameworks as tools developed through the science. Emerging global health priorities, including health equity, structural racism, coloniality, climate and planetary health, digital transformation, and policy implementation, raise questions about whether existing frameworks adequately capture power, history, resource constraints, political economy, community agency, and cross-setting adaptation13. The increased geographic scope of published studies adds to concerns about whether theories and frameworks current in the literature support the broader scope.
We also note the importance of understanding the function of existing frameworks, most clearly addressed in the seminal 2015 paper by Nilsen describing an initial taxonomy of theories, models, and frameworks in implementation science5. We note that this paper is now over a decade old. Proposing additional taxonomic categories of frameworks, models, and theories is an important step yet to be taken.
This background informs this collection proposal. We are calling for manuscripts to address the issues, which may include methods (what methods can be used to update or extend existing frameworks), perspective or commentary manuscripts (why is this important), and empirical papers offering new insights, updates, and extensions of existing frameworks. We would also welcome papers that explicitly focus on theorizing based on existing frameworks, focusing on prediction and explanation rather than description14. However, manuscripts proposing new frameworks will be considered only if they clearly demonstrate how the proposed contribution builds on, revises, synthesizes, tests, or challenges existing frameworks, and why a new framework or a substantial extension is necessary. The existing body of frameworks and models within implementation science and practice constitutes an important catalog of knowledge. Our goal is to build on that existing knowledge.
Examples of topics include, but are not limited to:
- Innovative papers that develop new substantive theories or significant theoretical extensions to existing theories
- Methods for classifying and categorizing existing frameworks
- Proposing new domains and constructs for existing determinant frameworks
- Synthesizing across existing process frameworks to describe common elements and areas of departure
- Practical guidance on how to use existing tools such as the “Assess the Dissemination and Implementation Models Webtool” or useful new tools and approaches to help people select and use existing frameworks (these are likely to be assessed for Implementation Science Communications rather than Implementation Science)
This Collection welcomes submissions of a range of article types. Should you wish to submit to this Collection, please read the submission guidelines of the journal you are submitting to, i.e., Implementation Science or Implementation Science Communications, to confirm that the type is accepted by the journal you are submitting to.
Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission systems in Implementation Science or Implementation Science Communications. During the submission process, you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection. Please select "Breaking Frameworks: Revisiting, Extending, Integrating, and Theorizing Implementation Frameworks" from the dropdown menu.
Articles will undergo the standard peer review process of the journal in which they are considered, Implementation Science or Implementation Science Communications, and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.
The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions that they handle through the peer-review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.
Publishing Model: Open Access
Deadline: Mar 09, 2027
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