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Last month, d3center and CADIO convened researchers, methodologists, trainees, and implementation partners for the Conference on Intervention Optimization, a three-day gathering focused on advancing the science and practice of building more effective, efficient, and implementable interventions.
The conference brought together 179 attendees across 12 sessions and 80 poster presentations, with representation from 82 institutions and organizations. That range reflected one of the central themes of the meeting: intervention optimization is becoming a shared framework for researchers working across many domains.
Across the program, attendees discussed applications across a wide variety of areas, including cancer control, HIV prevention, tobacco cessation, weight loss, diabetes prevention, trauma and PTSD, cardiovascular care, education, digital mental health, adolescent nutrition, and more. Lightning talks, poster sessions, plenaries, and informal discussions showed that research to optimize interventions is not only expanding to include a broader array of topic areas, it is also enabling researchers to address a broader array of scientific questions.
Several themes emerged. Many presentations focused on preparation-phase work, including co-design, qualitative methods, user-centered design, mixed-methods pilot testing, and other formative approaches that help research teams investigate the feasibility and acceptability of intervention and study procedures before launching full-scale optimization trials.
Others highlighted the growing importance of methodological and software-related resources to support intervention optimization research. This includes mobile health software platforms, REDCap integrations to data workflows, and accessible methodological tools for optimizing JITAIs.
The conference also surfaced major scientific questions for the next phase of the field. Attendees returned repeatedly to questions about participant engagement, burden, and receptivity: when lower-burden interventions are preferable, when more effortful components are worth the investment, and how engagement can be measured in ways that support better tailoring. Plenary discussions also emphasized mechanisms and measurement, especially the need to understand not only whether interventions work, but why they work and for whom.
The closing plenary reflected this momentum. In a poll of discussion topics, attendees selected Potency vs. Scalability, “Black Box” vs. Interpretable Tailoring, and Is Less Always More? as the top three themes for discussion. These questions point to a field that increasingly recognizes the need to navigate competing priorities and tradeoffs when optimizing interventions.
Perhaps most importantly, the conference created space for shared terminology across disciplines, methods, and professional roles. Intervention optimization advances through strong methods, but also through collaboration, translation, and sustained exchange between methodologists, domain scientists, trainees, implementation partners, and communications and operations teams who help make this work usable across settings.
Building on this momentum, d3center and CADIO will continue sharing training opportunities, resources, publications, and related updates for researchers interested in the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST), adaptive interventions, and related methods.
Explore Intervention Optimization Resources →
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