title: An analysis of the adaptability of a professional development program in public health: results from the ALPS Study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Professional development is a key component of effective public health infrastructures. To be successful, professional development programs in public health and health promotion must adapt to practitioners' complex real-world practice settings while preserving the core components of those programs' models and theoretical bases. An appropriate balance must be struck between implementation fidelity, defined as respecting the core nature of the program that underlies its effects, and adaptability to context to maximize benefit in specific situations. This article presents a professional development pilot program, the Health Promotion Laboratory (HPL), and analyzes how it was adapted to three different settings while preserving its core components. An exploratory analysis was also conducted to identify team and contextual factors that might have been at play in the emergence of implementation profiles in each site.
  
  
  METHODS
  This paper describes the program, its core components and adaptive features, along with three implementation experiences in local public health teams in Quebec, Canada. For each setting, documentary sources were analyzed to trace the implementation of activities, including temporal patterns throughout the project for each program component. Information about teams and their contexts/settings was obtained through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with HPL participants, colleagues and managers from each organization.
  
  
  RESULTS
  While each team developed a unique pattern of implementing the activities, all the program's core components were implemented. Differences of implementation were observed in terms of numbers and percentages of activities related to different components of the program as well as in the patterns of activities across time. It is plausible that organizational characteristics influencing, for example, work schedule flexibility or learning culture might have played a role in the HPL implementation process.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This paper shows how a professional development program model can be adapted to different contexts while preserving its core components. Capturing the heterogeneity of the intervention's exposure, as was done here, will make possible in-depth impact analyses involving, for example, the testing of program-context interactions to identify program outcomes predictors. Such work is essential to advance knowledge on the action mechanisms of professional development programs.
authors.affiliation: IRSPUM, Université de Montréal, P.O. Box 6128, Centre-ville Station, Montréal, QC, H3C 3 J7, Canada. Lucie.Richard@Umontreal.ca.|Faculty of Nursing, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada. Lucie.Richard@Umontreal.ca.|Léa-Roback Research Centre on Social Inequalities of Health in Montréal, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada. Lucie.Richard@Umontreal.ca.
authors.forename: Lucie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Richard
authors.affiliation: IRSPUM, Université de Montréal, P.O. Box 6128, Centre-ville Station, Montréal, QC, H3C 3 J7, Canada. sara.torres.ospina@umontreal.ca.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Torres
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, 5858 Côte-des-Neiges Road, 3rd floor, Montreal, QC, H3S 1Z1, Canada. marie-claude.tremblay3@mail.mcgill.ca.
authors.forename: Marie-Claude
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Tremblay
authors.affiliation: Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier Ave. East, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6 N5, Canada. francois.chiocchio@telfer.uottawa.ca.|Institut de recherche de l'Hôpital Montfort, Ottawa, ON, Canada. francois.chiocchio@telfer.uottawa.ca.
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chiocchio
authors.affiliation: Public Health Directorate for Montreal, Montreal Health and Social Services Agency, 1301 Sherbrooke St. East, Montreal, QC, H2L 1 M3, Canada. elitvak@santepub-mtl.qc.ca.
authors.forename: Éric
authors.initials: É
authors.lastname: Litvak
authors.affiliation: IRSPUM, Université de Montréal, P.O. Box 6128, Centre-ville Station, Montréal, QC, H3C 3 J7, Canada.
authors.forename: Laurence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fortin-Pellerin
authors.affiliation: Public Health Directorate for Montreal, Montreal Health and Social Services Agency, 1301 Sherbrooke St. East, Montreal, QC, H2L 1 M3, Canada. nbeaudet@santepub-mtl.qc.ca.|Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada. nbeaudet@santepub-mtl.qc.ca.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Beaudet
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000193:education*; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D017145:Models, Educational; D010865:Pilot Projects; D016730:Program Development; D011634:Public Health; D011792:Quebec; D013192:Staff Development / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013664:Teaching Materials