Improving sustainable transportation options will help cities tackle growing challenges related to population health, congestion, climate change and inequity. Interventions supporting active transportation face many practical and political hurdles. Implementation science aims to understand how interventions or policies arise, how they can be translated to new contexts or scales and who benefits. Sustainable transportation interventions are complex, and existing implementation science frameworks may not be suitable. To apply and adapt implementation science for healthy cities, we have launched our mixed-methods research programme, CapaCITY/É. We aim to understand how, why and for whom sustainable transportation interventions are successful and when they are not.

Across nine Canadian municipalities and the State of Victoria (Australia), our research will focus on two types of sustainable transportation interventions: all ages and abilities bicycle networks and motor vehicle speed management interventions. We will (1) document the implementation process and outcomes of both types of sustainable transportation interventions; (2) examine equity, health and mobility impacts of these interventions; (3) advance implementation science by developing a novel sustainable transportation implementation science framework and (4) develop tools for scaling up and scaling out sustainable transportation interventions. Training activities will develop interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners able to work at the nexus of academia and sustainable cities.

This study received approval from the Simon Fraser University Office of Ethics Research (H22-03469). A Knowledge Mobilization Hub will coordinate dissemination of findings via a website; presentations to academic, community organisations and practitioner audiences; and through peer-reviewed articles.

To characterise surgical site infections (SSIs) after open surgery in the UK’s National Health Service.

Retrospective cohort analysis of electronic records of patients from Clinical Practice Research Datalink, linked with Hospital Episode Statistics’ secondary care datasets.

Clinical practice in the community and secondary care.

Cohort of 50 000 adult patients who underwent open surgery between 2017 and 2022.

Incidence of SSI, clinical outcomes, patterns of care and costs of wound management.

11% (5281/50 000) of patients developed an SSI a mean of 18.4±14.7 days after their surgical procedure, of which 15% (806/5281) were inpatients and 85% (4475/5281) were in the community after hospital discharge. The incidence of SSI varied according to anatomical site of surgery. The incidence also varied according to a patient’s risk and whether they underwent an emergency procedure. SSI onset reduced the 6 months healing rate by a mean of 3 percentage points and increased time to wound healing by a mean of 15 days per wound. SSIs were predominantly managed in the community by practice and district nurses and 16% (850/5281) of all patients were readmitted into hospital. The total health service cost of surgical wound management following SSI onset was a mean of £3537 per wound ranging from £2542 for a low-risk patient who underwent an elective procedure to £4855 for a high-risk patient who underwent an emergency procedure.

This study provides important insights into several aspects of SSI management in clinical practice in the UK that have been difficult to ascertain from surveillance data. Surgeons are unlikely to be fully aware of the true incidence of SSI and how they are managed once patients are discharged from hospital. Current SSI surveillance services appear to be under-reporting the actual incidence.