Thinking through innovation and implementation with Normalization Process Theory

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A seminar run by Professor of Medical Sociology, Carl May from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Understanding the dynamics of implementation processes and evaluating their outcomes in practice is an important problem for healthcare managers and policy makers, and for patients and others who must operationalize them beyond formal clinical settings.

Normalization Process Theory (NPT) provides a set of conceptual tools and research instruments that can help us think through and understand implementation processes. There are now more than 200 studies reporting work informed by NPT, and although it is a contribution to applied social science research, it deals with a very fundamental sociological problem: how are the strategic intentions of one group of actors translated into the everyday practices of others?

This talk introduces NPT and considers the growing body of empirical evidence that supports its account of the mechanisms that motivate and shape implementation processes in a wide range of settings, from the work that patients do to adhere to self-care regimens in Scotland, to identifying women at risk of intimate partner violence in Australia.