Innovation Recipients include anyone expected to benefit from implementation of the innovation. It is important to center recipients to help ensure their needs (see Implementation Process: Assessing Needs) are prioritized (see Inner Setting: Culture: Recipient-Centeredness) (Godbee et al. 2020; Dy et al. 2015). Types of recipients have included, but are not limited to, community health workers, outreach teams, nurses, community members within communities (Naidoo et al. 2018), teachers, parents, students, food service staff (Norman et al. 2015; Okamoto et al. 2020; Tabak and Moreland-Russell 2015) in schools, or farmers and extension service individuals in farming (Tinc et al. 2018). Other terms used for Innovation Recipients have included consumers or clients. Innovation Recipients are determined by the goals and focus for implementing an innovation.
The original CFIR (Damschroder, Aron, et al. 2009) acknowledged that within healthcare, many theories of research uptake or implementation acknowledge the importance of accounting for patient (recipient) characteristics (Feldstein and Glasgow 2008; Rycroft-Malone, Kitson, et al. 2002; Graham and Logan 2004). Users are strongly encouraged to use the published CFIR outcomes addendum (Damschroder, Reardon, Opra Widerquist, et al. 2022) to guide conceptualization of this role because recipients can play multiple roles, e.g., implementation team members, in addition to receiving the innovation.