The theme for the 11th Annual Symposium on Global Cancer Research, co-convened with partners by the U.S. NCI Center for Global Health is "Closing the Research-to-Implementation Gap." Here, we reflect on the evolving role of implementation science from the lens of the needs of low- and middle-income countries. We highlight the importance for stronger and sustained engagement of implementation scientists and cancer control and prevention practitioners to enable more context-relevant co-design of implementation plans and strategies. We argue that deep learning from embedded implementation research through inductive analytic approaches is a critical first step to acceleration of evidence-to-practice translation and suggest an important role for systems approaches to facilitate this transition.
©2023 American Association for Cancer Research.