Background/Aims The Communication & Dissemination (C&D) Scientific Working Group (SWG) is one of four research groups in the new CRN4. This SWG combines four distinct scientific areas of research: communication, decision-making, dissemination, and implementation. These four scientific areas represent some of the highest priorities of the National Cancer Institute for healthcare reform, improving patient-centered care, empowering patients, and spreading and scaling-up effective practices throughout the nation.

Methods Four scientific areas are targeted for the generation of new research proposals: (1) Communication (including patient-clinician communication, intra-team communication, organization interactions with patients, peer-to-peer communication, social media, health literacy, and the operation of health literate organizations); (2) Decision-making (including how patients make decisions, clinician decision-making, and how patient-clinician interactions shape decision-making); (3) Dissemination (including pre-production research to improve evidence-based practices, programs, and guidelines prior to dissemination, comparative studies of alternative modalities for communicating with potential adopting clinicians and patients, and diffusion outcomes that reflect behavioral responses of those targeted for adoption); and (4) Implementation (including fidelity-adaptation, core-periphery components of interventions that are implemented, practitioner contributions to evidence-based practices and programs, and the study of sustainability). Research proposals will be generated in each of these four scientific areas on the basis of targeted outreach to publishing researchers in each of these areas, personal networking by SWG co-chairs with researchers external to the CRN; and monthly meetings and messaging with CRN investigators. Co-chairs will participate in a variety of conferences to publicize the CRN and themselves be involved in leading, and in facilitating, research.

Results Metrics for success will include the number of research proposals submitted, research proposals funded, external collaborators on proposals, external collaborators on funded teams, number of participants in C&D SWG monthly calls, and in the longer term, the extent to which SWG members contribute to and are representatives to decision making bodies for national research agendas.

Conclusions Co-chairs are pairing short- and medium-term activities with a progressive long-term research agenda that will make contributions to healthcare reform and the testing of disruptive innovations in clinical practice.