Advances in intervention research have substantially improved our understanding of how to treat mental health conditions.
However, the mere existence of effective interventions does not ensure meaningful public health impact. A persistent research to practice gap remains, with many evidence-based treatments taking up to seventeen years to be adopted in routine care, often at variable fidelity. Implementation science address this gap by systematically studying the strategies and contextual factors that influence the adoption, integration, scale-up, and sustainability of evidence-based practices in real-world care settings. Addressing this gap requires attention not only to intervention effectiveness, but also clinician decision-making, organizational readiness to change, workflow integration, policy context, and health equity.
Our faculty employs a diverse range of methodological approaches, including hybrid-effectiveness-implementation designs, research-supported intervention adaptation frameworks, mixed methods research, health services analyses, decision science frameworks, and quality improvement strategies to examine how to maximize adoption of evidence-based practices that work. We partner with academics, community-based leaders, stakeholders, and persons with lived experiences of mental health conditions to study novel strategies to maximize uptake and use of evidence-based practices in real-world systems. By strengthening implementation processes, we move toward durable system-level changes that translate research to practice with rapid speed, resulting in reductions in disease morbidity and mortality while promoting holistic recovery.
Leadership
Jennifer Lockman, Ph.D.
Program Lead
Assistant Professor
jlockman@uab.edu