Rates of sustainment in the Universal Stages of Implementation Completion

BACKGROUND: Sustainment is a desirable outcome of implementation, but its precise definition remains unclear, contributing to the difficulty of identifying a generalized rate of sustainment. Several studies and reviews on the topic differ on both definition and levels of analysis. Furthermore, methodological limitations might have influenced the results, including the unknown quality with which some interventions were delivered. The Universal Stages of Implementation Completion (UniSIC) is a standardized measurement tool that tracks the implementation process and milestone completion across a wide range of real-world implementations—this provides a unique opportunity to identify a generalized rate of sustainment. METHODS: UniSIC data was captured from the SIC website on 27 September 2020 and included data from all sites (n = 1778) that had been tracked to date. Data were restricted to sites that achieved competency in program delivery, and thus had a newly adopted program worthy of sustainment. Dates and indicator variables of implementation activities were combined to form two alternate definitions of sustainment: sustained (start-up) was achieved if sites continued to deliver services 2 years past their program start-up date; sustained (competent) was achieved if sites continued to deliver services 2 years past their competence and/or certification date. Of sites eligible for inclusion based on these definitions (N = 208), descriptive analyses were conducted to determine a rate of sustainment for all programs that successfully started a program. These definitions were also applied to a combined sample for a general rate of sustainment among all sites. Rates of competency among both a sample of sites that started up and a combined sample were also identified. RESULTS: The rate of competence was 58.5% and the rate of sustained (start-up) was 37.1%, while the rate of sustained (competent) was 25.1%. The rates of competence and sustainment among the combined samples were far lower: 15.6% for competence, 6.8% for sustained (start-up), and 4.4% for sustained (competent). CONCLUSIONS: These identified rates of sustainment are accurate initial estimates of sustainment of community-based practices, or in general. Future research on rates of sustainment should carefully define measures of sustainment and be transparent about the real-world conditions on which analyses are centered.