Completed Research

r2p Coordinating Project (Completed 2014-2019)

The Research to Practice (r2p) Coordinating Project addressed the National Academies’ concern of how to “get vital information to the worker ‘in the trench’ or ‘on the steel’ and persuade contractors and workers to effectively use the interventions that are developed through research.” The r2p Project aimed to increase the dissemination, awareness, and use of evidence based health and safety interventions in the construction industry by advancing the development of integrated dissemination systems and studying the effectiveness of these systems in moving promising interventions to scale. The Project built on a foundation laid in an initial exploratory phase (2010-2014), with a broader range of  efforts to “push” interventions out to end-users. In this second phase, there was an increasing emphasis on how to create “pull” or demand for evidence-based prevention strategies from workers and contractors in the field and to connect research with their on-the-ground needs.

The Project’s five specific aims developed and integrated critical push-pull components of an r2p system: (1) Plan and prioritize research translation through r2p researcher “Roadmaps” to ensure the proactive dissemination of results, and through the “triage” of completed research findings ready for broader dissemination; (2) Coordinate and actively disseminate high priority research outputs through efforts led by an OSHA, NIOSH, and CPWR joint r2p Working Group; (3) Expand infrastructure and resources for r2p by facilitating an exchange between existing training networks in construction and investigators; by convening stakeholders and experts to identify and pilot promising new channels to influence hard-to-reach immigrant construction workers and small contractors; and by further developing and promoting outreach resources for r2p; (4) Build linkages and synergy among r2p efforts through coordination across all Construction Center r2p projects and in annual r2p seminars for key construction audiences; and (5) Evaluate all r2p activities to assess progress and outcomes using surveys, interviews, focus groups, document review, web metrics, and administrative tracking.