Category: Dissemination & Implementation Science
Siena Tugendrajch, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Aaron Lyon, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
Professor
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
Elizabeth McGuier, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Pediatrics
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Allison Goodman, M.S. (she/her/hers)
Doctoral Candidate
Florida International University
Miami, Florida
Tristan Maesaka, M.A. (she/her/hers)
Graduate Student
University of Hawai’i at Manoa
Honolulu, Hawaii
Siena Tugendrajch, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
The behavioral health workforce includes professionals from multiple disciplines working across varied settings. Despite the common goal of providing high quality care, exposure to and use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) is highly variable even within disciplines, with the unintended consequence of a well-meaning but disjointed workforce. To address the need for effective cross-disciplinary training, this symposium will highlight four innovative training approaches for a variety of human service professionals working in community-based settings, with an additional emphasis on school-based providers. As the need for mental health services has skyrocketed in recent years, determining optimal training approaches is a critical component of both meeting this high demand for care and also promoting the use of high-quality, evidence-based interventions.
In implementation science research, researchers and community partners are often working towards the adoption and sustainment of new practices. To design effective trainings, these efforts must include input from the communities where these practices will be implemented. This symposium is an opportunity to showcase how to tailor trainings for specific service sectors, while using established best practices to develop trainings. Although presenters will be discussing training approaches for different interventions, these projects also demonstrate the need for rigorous evaluation of actual practice implementation and additional key drivers of implementation (e.g., perceptions of the EBP).
These training-focused presentations will span several states and service sectors (i.e., schools, community mental health, child advocacy centers). The first presentation will describe adaptation and initial testing of an intervention to improve teamwork skills in multidisciplinary teams responding to child abuse. It will highlight the use of a collaborative, community-engaged approach to adapting an evidence-based training and describe training effects on team member knowledge and skills from a multisite RCT. The second presentation will detail the collaboration between researchers and City Year Miami to create and implement mental health training for AmeriCorps Members in Miami public schools. Qualitative data from community partners and organization leaders will be presented to explore transportability. The third presentation will share data from a statewide effort to implement Managing and Adapting Practice in schools, while contextualizing community mental health in school settings prior to this training. Data on provider use of specific practice elements for common youth mental health problems will be presented in addition to several predictors of implementation outcomes. The final presentation will be an evaluation of a pilot training approach for graduate students learning to deliver cognitive-behavioral therapy skills groups in schools. Changes in knowledge and skill will be presented along with qualitative reflections from participating graduate students. We hope this symposium will be valuable for those with any interest in implementation science as an opportunity to consider both how to design tailored training approaches and also what to evaluate.
