The key questions identified by the National Cancer Institute Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences in February 2001 were:

Types of diffusion and dissemination strategies that are effective

• What is the range of proactive diffusion and dissemination strategies that has been shown to be effective?
• What diffusion and dissemination strategies currently in use are ineffective?

Variation across the cancer control continuum

• Do dissemination and diffusion strategies vary across the cancer control continuum from prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment and end of life issues?
• Do diffusion and dissemination strategies vary for special populations, eg low income, less than high school education and ethnically diverse minority populations?
• Do diffusion and dissemination strategies vary among individual, institutional, community and policy level interventions?

Diffusion and dissemination outcomes

• What outcome measures are used to assess the effectiveness of proactive diffusion and dissemination strategies?
• What are the predictors of long term maintenance of diffusion and dissemination interventions?

Future direction

• What are the important diffusion and dissemination research questions that need to be addressed?

Our goal in this project is to separate at each level of care (consumers and patients, practitioners and policy) diffusion and dissemination strategies that are applicable across the cancer control continuum from those strategies that appear more suited to specific points along the continuum.