Implementation Science course
Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences at University of Copenhagen
This is a generic course. This means that the course is reserved for PhD students at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences at UCPH.
Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student at the Graduate School, you will be placed on the waiting list until enrollment deadline. After the enrolment deadline, available seats will be allocated to the waiting list.
The course is free of charge for PhD students at Danish universities (except Copenhagen Business School), and for PhD students at NorDoc member faculties. All other participants must pay the course fee.
Learning objectives
A student who has met the objectives of the course will be able to:
1. Achieve knowledge and competencies to implement interventions and change.
2. Have competencies to plan, conduct, report and evaluate the implementation of interventions and implementation research.
3. Have knowledge and understanding of fundamental principles of designing, conducting, and reporting implementation processes and implementation research.
4. Have knowledge, understanding and competencies of designing projects with hybrid designs and argumentation of the challenges involved.
5. Analyse and argue for how to select implementation frameworks, theories, and models.
6. Have knowledge and competencies to tailored implementation strategies.
7. Achieve knowledge and competencies to build implementation capacity in practice.
8. Prepared a written assignment for the intervention and/or implementation.
9. Create networks among implementation researchers.
Content
Many clinicians and researchers struggle with the critical step of translating effective interventions into routine practice. This transition is often more complex than the development of the intervention itself, as it requires navigating resistance among professionals, limited resources, organizational barriers, and competing priorities. Despite decades of research demonstrating these challenges, most resources for innovations are still directed toward developing new interventions rather than ensuring their sustainable implementation. The result is a persistent knowing–doing gap, where even strong and evidence-based interventions risk never being embedded in practice.
This Ph.D.-level course is designed to address this gap by offering participants insight into the science of implementation. The course provide a general introduction to the implementation science field, focusing on how implementation can be systematically studied, theorized, and evaluated within health, public health, and medical sciences. The course emphasizes how implementation considerations should be integrated already at the design stage of clinical and public health research, and how theoretical, methodological, and practical approaches can be combined to strengthen real-world uptake.
Participants will be introduced to the historical and theoretical foundations of implementation science and will work in depth with key concepts such as determinants of implementation, contextual and cultural influences, intervention complexity, and behavior change. They will engage with methodological approaches, including hybrid effectiveness–implementation designs, the use of frameworks and theories to guide analysis, and programme theory as a tool for planning and evaluating implementation. A central focus is on the ability to critically select and tailor implementation strategies to address identified barriers and facilitators in specific contexts.
Throughout the course, participants will actively apply these perspectives to their own or shared intervention research projects. By working iteratively with project descriptions, they will practice analyzing implementation challenges, developing theoretically informed strategies, and designing evaluation approaches. Teaching will alternate between lectures, case-based discussions, and group work to ensure a high level of interaction and reflection.
Participants
Minimum 16 participants, maximum 20 participants
The course is designed for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who wish to develop both foundational and advanced knowledge of implementation research. Over five days, participants will be introduced to the field and progressively engage with key concepts, theories, frameworks, and methods in Implementation Science.
A central focus of the course is to support participants in working systematically with implementation research and in applying relevant approaches to the development, refinement, and critical assessment of their own intervention or implementation project. The course therefore combines introductory teaching with more advanced methodological and applied work.
The course is suitable both for participants who are new to Implementation Science and for those who are already engaged in an implementation-related project and wish to strengthen its theoretical, methodological, and practical foundation.
Applicants should have an academic background in health, public health, medical- or social sciences.
Relevance to graduate programmes
The course is relevant to PhD students from the following graduate programmes at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences, UCPH:
All graduate programmes
Language
English and Danish
Form
Lectures, group work, discussions and technology-supported
Course director
Senior researcher, Associate professor in implementation research, Jeanette Wassar Kirk, Ph.D., Department of Clinical Research, Copenhagen University Hospital, Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark and Department of Health and Social Context, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. E-mail: jeanette.wassar.kirk@regionh.dk
Teachers
Senior researcher, Associate professor in implementation research, Jeanette Wassar Kirk, Ph.D., Department of Clinical Research, Copenhagen University Hospital, Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark and Department of Health and Social Context, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark.
Professor Ove Andersen, Department of Clinical Research, Copenhagen University Hospital, Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen and Department of Clinical Medicine, Denmark
Professor Thomas Q Bandholm, of Clinical Exercise Physiology and Rehabilitation at The Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, and Senior Researcher at the Department of Clinical Research, Amager and Hvidovre Hospital, Denmark.
Associate professor Marie Broholm-Holst, Department of Health and Social Context, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
Professor Per Nilsen, Department of Health, Medical and Caring Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
Senior researcher Margit Neher, Department of Health, Medical and Caring Sciences, Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden
Implementation Scientist Bianca Alberts, University of Zurich, Zürich, Schweiz
Dates
18 - 21 May 2027
Course location
Department of Clinical Research, Copenhagen University Hospital, Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark
Registration
Please register before 1 March 2027
Expected frequency
Once a year
Seats to PhD students from other Danish universities will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules. Applications from other participants will be considered after the last day of enrolment.