Identifying and defining implementation strategies for arts on prescription programs – a realist informed scoping review

BACKGROUND: Effective implementation strategies for Arts on Prescription (AoP) remain underexplored, though they are crucial for adoption, sustainment, and effectiveness. This realist informed scoping review aims to identify and define implementation strategies for implementing AoP programs. METHOD: First, we conducted a literature review to identify implementation strategies. Second, we gathered stakeholder perspectives on implementation strategies through workshops. Third, we synthesized findings from the first two steps, resulting in a unified set of implementation strategies. RESULTS: The synthesis generated a set of 48 implementation strategies grouped into five thematic categories: 1) Awareness of AoP; 2) Knowledge and Competences Related to AoP; 3) Organizational Set-up, Collaboration, and Infrastructure; 4) Facilitating AoP Experiences; and 5) Evaluation and Feedback. CONCLUSION: As a realist informed scoping review, this study provides a comprehensive set of implementation strategies that can guide implementation practice and research related to AoP programs but does not yet analyse context-mechanism-outcome-configurations. Further research should investigate how, for whom and under what circumstances these strategies work.