Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine to launch new online Master’s Degree program in Implementation Science

Preview blurb: Geisel’s new fully online 9-month MS in Implementation Science will give graduates the skills to identify and address gaps in moving evidence-based clinical practices into routine use in the real world.

HANOVER, NH – “How can we more quickly and effectively move new, proven scientific evidence into routine healthcare practice? What obstacles must be overcome to embrace change and modify behavior? How can we scale a successful intervention so that more people will benefit?”

These are some of the key questions future students will learn to tackle as enrollees of a unique new graduate degree program—a Master of Science (MS) in Implementation Science (IS)—which will be offered by Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine in partnership with the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies beginning in September of 2025. 

Implementation science is a burgeoning field that draws upon a rich and diverse set of established research traditions to address persistent gaps in moving evidence-based clinical practices into routine use in the real world.

“In other words, implementation scientists identify programs and policies that work, and collaborate with stakeholders to get people to actually use or follow them,” explains Jeremiah Brown, PhD, a professor of epidemiology at Geisel and founding director of the Dartmouth Center for Implementation Science (DCIS). 

Established last summer and housed at Geisel, DCIS serves as an academic home for IS research at Dartmouth, and as an axis for faculty, staff, and students to develop expertise in implementation science. 

“We’re very pleased to be launching our new MS in Implementation Science degree program,” says Duane Compton, PhD, dean of Geisel. “We experienced the need for how to put evidence-based knowledge into everyday practice, and through that we recognized that there is a dearth of education programs to train individuals with skills in implementation science. Thus, this new degree program will allow us to contribute to the rapidly increasing demand for trained experts in the field, and further position Dartmouth as a leader in implementation science nationally.”

The new graduate program will offer several distinctive features that will draw strong interest, especially from early-to-mid career professionals that want to develop expertise in the discipline. 

Dartmouth’s MS in Implementation Science will be one of the first standalone master’s programs in implementation science to be launched in the U.S.—currently, there are very few comprehensive training programs available in IS, as most are offered as part of other master’s programs. 

“It will also be the first fully online graduate program at Geisel—offered either over nine months or 18 months,” says Brown, who notes that the program will launch at the same time as the medical school’s MS in Health Data Science. “Having that format will give us the flexibility to provide a world-class program taught by national experts, at least a third of whom are based at other leading institutions across the country.” 

“The MS in Implementation Science will be Dartmouth’s second fully online master’s degree, following the launch of Thayer’s online program earlier this year,” says Joshua Kim, PhD, assistant provost for online learning strategy at Dartmouth College. “This new fully online MS in Implementation Science demonstrates Dartmouth’s commitment to serve a global audience of diverse learners with a Dartmouth quality education.”

The program will launch with 30 graduate students with a target of 50 students annually to be achieved within two to three years and will include international enrollment. Core competencies will be designed to prepare students to assume leadership roles in implementation science across many settings—whether it be in healthcare, academic or clinical research, public health, state education, or policy work. Admissions for next year’s inaugural class are open now. 

Curriculum

The program’s foundational curriculum, drawing from expertise across Dartmouth and international experts in implementation science, will provide coursework on: IS theories, models, and frameworks; implementation strategies and measures; study design; research approaches, including community engagement and participatory research; mixed methods for qualitative and quantitative data collection, analysis, and interpretation; adaptation and fidelity of interventions; and sustainment and sustainability in IS. 

Advanced and emerging topics will include de-implementation; global implementation science; digital health implementation; IS experimental designs, implementation costing measures and cost-effectiveness analysis, scaling-out interventions, and dissemination of evidence-based interventions.  

In addition to the core coursework, each student will complete a Capstone IMPACT Project (1.0 unit) that spans the entire program—stay tuned for more details.

For more information about the new MS in Implementation Science program, visit our Admissions siteor click here to request information.

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