Most sites will have done a great deal of groundwork for dissemination planning well before they prepare to close the study. Now is the time to revisit and revise all of the materials, outreach event formats, and lists of stakeholders that you have developed and compiled over the years. These resources should inform your dissemination plan. Decide which strategies have worked well in the past and should be reused. Take a hard look as well at which previous communications attempts did not work ideally and should be either improved or left out this time around.

You should assess and update your:

• Environmental scan
  What did your needs assessment or scan of the research environment (see Chapter 2) tell you about the best ways to share information with trial stakeholders? For some stakeholders, an e-mail message explaining the results may be sufficient. For others, it may be more appropriate to schedule a telephone call or visit.
• Internal and external audiences (see Chapters 2 and 7)
  Have new players entered the field since your study began? Have new donors become interested? Are new advocacy networks following your research?
• Key stakeholder lists, including media contacts
  Over the course of a trial, many people change positions. Planning for dissemination provides a good opportunity to update cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and other contact information.
• Key and supporting messages that convey and contextualize the study and key findings (see Chapter 7)
• Event reports or other materials used at public events held throughout this or other studies at your site
  Was there a lot of interest? A good turn-out? Did the event provide people the best venue for understanding the trial results? Were there any problems that you could have prevented?
• Background materials (see Box 6.4)