Objectives: The objective of this paper is to investigate what participatory health research (PHR) can offer implementation research (IR) and vice versa and discuss what health research funders can do to foster the intersection of both fields.
Methods: We contrast points of divergence and convergence between IR and PHR. We reflect on whether community engagement is necessary and on the unintended consequences of participation in IR. We describe how a research funder can incentivize PHR in IR.
Results: Participation is encouraged in IR but the nuances of who is involved merit greater attention in IR. PHR and IR differ in emphasis placed on the scale-up of the intervention. However, they share a common interest in generating real-world contextually relevant evidence.
Conclusions: We need to assess whether and how funding practices influence researchers in how they undertake PHR. Researchers need to better account for participatory approaches to ensure that any potentially harmful consequences are described (and better understood so they can be mitigated in the future) and elucidate the ways in which these processes do or do not enable implementation and scale-up of interventions in IR.