COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Health Serv.
Sec. Implementation Science
This article is part of the Research TopicDissemination and Implementation Science in MedicineView all 24 articles
The Power of Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Implementation Science: A Community Case Study in Sexual Violence Prevention Evaluation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Dartmouth College, Hanover, United States
- 2University of New Hampshire, Durham, United States
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Many institutions of higher education recognize the importance of sexual violence prevention efforts. However, often practitioners tasked with offering prevention efforts lack the time and expertise to assess programs. Researcher-practitioner partnerships offer a solution that provides mutual benefits and is reinforced by implementation science. Through our own experiences in a six-year collaboration between a university research center and a small private college's sexual violence prevention team we discovered the value of researcher-practitioner partnerships. Our partnership focused on evaluating a multi-year, required sexual violence prevention curriculum, currently implementing best-practice skill-building and prevention-techniques for college students at a small private college. Robust evaluation efforts, made possible through the researcher-practitioner partnership, have been essential in gaining key insights and making data-informed improvements to ensure effectiveness of the curriculum. The manuscript provides background on the importance of sexual violence prevention on college campuses and how implementation science and effective researcher-practitioner partnerships can address challenges. Findings from the evaluation project will be shared in future publications, allowing this article to focus on best practices, methodology, and lessons learned related to the researcher-practitioner partnership that align with key implementation science constructs. We aim to offer actionable methods and strategies for other researchers, evaluators, and practitioners to strengthen prevention efforts in higher education settings and beyond.
Keywords: Evaluation2, Higher Education6, implementation science3, prevention1, Researcher-Practitioner partnership5, Sexual Violence4
Received: 06 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Barthelmes, Childress, Gillis, Lee and Stapleton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Caitlin Knotts Barthelmes
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