Apply the diffusion of innovations model and the RE-AIM framework to plan, implement and evaluate health promotion action for collective resilience

What this dot point is asking

Units 3 and 4 use the diffusion of innovations model and the RE-AIM framework alongside the Ottawa Charter to plan and evaluate health promotion. QCAA wants you to apply these models, not just name them: use diffusion to explain how a new behaviour or norm spreads through a population, and use RE-AIM to evaluate whether a campaign actually worked and lasted. "Apply" means mapping each model onto a real campaign and using it to make planning or evaluation judgements.

The answer

The diffusion of innovations model

The diffusion of innovations model explains how a new idea, behaviour or product spreads through a population over time. People adopt at different rates, usually grouped as:

• Innovators, the first to try something new.
• Early adopters, respected opinion leaders who try it next.
• Early majority, who adopt once they see it working.
• Late majority, who adopt under social pressure once it is common.
• Laggards, the last to adopt.

The practical lesson for health promotion is that you do not have to convince everyone at once. If you reach innovators and early adopters, especially trusted opinion leaders, a new norm can spread through the early and late majority on its own. The speed of diffusion also depends on how the innovation is perceived: its relative advantage, how compatible it is with existing values, how simple it is, whether people can trial it, and whether its benefits are observable. Designing a behaviour to score well on these features speeds its uptake.

The RE-AIM framework

RE-AIM is an evaluation framework with five dimensions:

• Reach: how many of the target population the program actually reached, and how representative they were.
• Effectiveness: the size and balance of positive and negative outcomes.
• Adoption: how many settings or organisations took the program up.
• Implementation: how faithfully and consistently the program was delivered.
• Maintenance: whether effects and the program itself were sustained over time.

RE-AIM stops you from judging a campaign on a single flashy outcome. A campaign that reaches few people, is delivered inconsistently, or fades after launch fails on RE-AIM even if its message was clever.

Using the two models together

The models complement each other. Diffusion helps you plan: target opinion leaders and design the behaviour to be easy to adopt so a new norm spreads. RE-AIM helps you evaluate: check whether the campaign reached a representative group, worked, was adopted by settings, was delivered as intended, and lasted. Used together they cover the full cycle of building collective resilience: getting a healthy norm to spread and then verifying it stuck.

Applying to a campaign

Take a campaign promoting respectful relationships in the post-schooling transition. Diffusion guides you to recruit respected peers as early adopters and to make the behaviour visible and easy. RE-AIM then frames your evaluation: did the campaign reach a representative slice of the cohort, did distress or risk measures improve, did organisations adopt it, was it delivered consistently, and did the norm persist after the launch? Answering with evidence against each dimension is high-value in the IA1 action research and the investigation.