Mental and Behavioral Health Services and Implementation
For decades, the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences has conducted groundbreaking epidemiologic studies that accelerate the delivery of evidence-based interventions and innovative programs that improve mental health and reduce substance misuse and addiction.
Our epidemiologic studies identify risk and protective factors needed to address the unique mental health and substance use needs of patients and community populations. Our services research translates evidence-based interventions into practice by improving access, affordability, organization and financing. The department’s implementation research investigates system-level strategies to deliver evidence-based interventions through a variety of service systems: healthcare, public schools, other governmental institutions and community organizations.
For the past 40 years, the Health Disparities and Public Policy Program, co-led by Karen Abram, PhD, has conducted comprehensive studies investigating the interface between the mental health and criminal justice systems, and associated health disparities. The program includes project staff from a wide variety of disciplines, doctoral students from the Clinical Psychology program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and post-doctoral fellows. The program is currently conducting the Northwestern Juvenile Project, the first large scale, longitudinal study of mental health needs and outcomes of juvenile detainees, and on the Northwestern Juvenile Project: Next Generation study, a longitudinal intergenerational study which aims to identify what predicts positive outcomes in at-risk youth. Results from their research studies have provided the needed empirical data to guide U.S. policy: Findings have been cited in Supreme Court amicus briefs, congressional hearings and surgeon general’s reports.
Contact
710 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 900 Chicago, IL 60611
Sara J. Becker, PhD, is the Inaugural Director of the Center for Dissemination and Implementation (D&I) Science, one of the interdisciplinary centers of Northwestern's Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM). The vision of the Center is to advance equitable access to evidence-based public health and medical interventions by: accelerating the impact of research across the translational continuum; training the next generation of D&I public health researchers and practitioners; and serving as a hub of pragmatic D&I science research at the Feinberg School of Medicine, locally, domestically, and globally.
Current Projects:
Project MIMIC (Maximizing Implementation of Motivational Incentives in Clinics) – With Bryan Garner of Ohio State University, Dr. Becker is co-leading a 5-year R01 evaluating multi-level strategies to implement contingency management, an evidence-based addiction treatment, in 30 opioid treatment programs.
ARCH - With Caroline Kuo of American University and Goodman Sibeko of University of Cape Town, Dr. Becker is co-leading a 5-year P01 project testing a train-the-trainer strategy to cascade Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment targeting risky alcohol use throughout HIV service organizations in South Africa.
Parent SMART – Dr. Becker is leading an R37 (eligible for up to 10 years of funding) testing a technology-assisted intervention for parents of adolescents in residential substance use treatment.
Project MIMIC2 – Dr. Becker is leading a 5-year P50 project component that represents a follow-up to Project MIMIC. This iteration uses a stepped wedge trial to test a refined multi-level implementation strategy across 10 opioid treatment programs.
New England Addiction Technology Transfer Center – With Rosemarie Martin of the Brown University School of Public Health, Dr. Becker is co-leading a SAMHSA-funded center which annually provides training and technical assistance to over 2,100 front-line addiction treatment providers.
Contact
633 North Saint Clair Street Suite 2000 Chicago, IL 60611
Allison Carroll, PhD, is core faculty in the Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science (CDIS) in Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM). She uses mixed methods in her research in implementation science, community-engagement, behavioral interventions, chronic disease prevention and management, and health equity. She is PI of a K23 career development award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and is a collaborator on a number of research studies.
CIRCL-Chicago: Community Intervention to Reduce Cardiovascular Disease in Chicago
Implementation and Expansion of the Collaborative Behavioral Health Program (CBHP), an integrated collaborative care model for depression in Northwestern Medicine primary care clinics
Contact
750 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 1000 Chicago, IL 60611
Richard Epstein, PhD, MPH, is a licensed clinical psychologist and applied pediatric health services investigator. He has expertise using administrative data from health and human services systems such as medical claims and child welfare records to examine issues related to implementation and outcomes of healthcare and other human services. Epstein also has expertise conducting systematic and comparative effectiveness reviews of existing literature on interventions for pediatric populations. Whether analyzing administrative data or reviewing extant literature, the goal of his research is to help identify effective ways to organize, manage and provide high quality care to children and families of children who have experienced adversity, have special healthcare needs or are involved with publicly funded child welfare or mental health services.
Contact
710 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 902 Chicago, IL 60611
The BRIDGES team led by C. Hendricks Brown, PhD, participates in a diverse set of research projects and initiatives, including:
Collaborative Behavioral Health Project (CBHP): This study is a stepped-wedge hybrid type 2 randomized roll-out effectiveness-implementation trial of the Collaborative Care Model in 11 primary care practices affiliated with Northwestern Medicine. Using a sequential mixed methods approach, we will assess key stakeholders' perspectives on barriers and facilitators of implementation and sustainability of CBHP. The speed and quantity of implementation activities completed over a 30-month period for each practice will be assessed. Economic analyses will be conducted to determine the budget impact and cost offset of CBHP in the healthcare system. The CBHP research team consists of both researchers and clinicians. This project is funded by the Woman's Board of Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Cassandra Kisiel, PhD, works with the Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services and Systems Integration (CCTASSI) which has been funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as a Treatment and Service Adaptation Center of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). The Center offers national expertise on both assessing and addressing the complex, developmental effects of trauma for system-involved youth and developing trauma-informed, child-serving systems and agencies. The Center's focus includes the development, adaptation, and widespread dissemination of trauma-focused training curriculum and resources within targeted service settings across the country, with a particular emphasis on child welfare, juvenile justice, and behavioral health. The team includes both faculty and project staff from a variety of disciplines, and doctoral and master’s students from the Clinical Psychology Program within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. An innovative feature of the Center’s work includes the development and dissemination of several public awareness films, focused on complex trauma, transition age youth, and race and trauma. The Center's research and evaluation efforts include assessing the use and impact of our resources and training and implementation programs on provider attitude, knowledge, skill, and practice change, and the utility and impact of our resources on family partners and community members. The Center has utilized a variety of techniques, including analysis of large scale data sets to identify trauma-related needs and strengths within our target populations; use of quality improvement data to inform ongoing service needs and the need for adaptations to existing training and implementation approaches; collection of both survey and qualitative data (e.g., focus groups, interviews, other narrative data) from providers and family partners to identify key needs, translate findings into the development of practical resources for providers, and consolidate these findings for dissemination and publication.
Contact
710 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 1200 Chicago, IL 60611
Ashley Knapp’s research is focused on youth digital mental health broadly, with a particular interest in designing and implementing accessible, community-based digital tools with marginalized youth and those youth most experiencing inequities. In particular, she is passionate about partnering with minoritized groups who have historically been underrepresented and not included in research to co-design digital tools to fit their needs and deploy those tools in public settings that are easily accessed. Dr. Knapp is currently supported by a NIMH-funded K01 award where she is partnering with a public library and their teen patrons to co-create a digital mental health service for anxiety to be implemented into the library’s teen services. She also uses the integration of human-centered design and implementation research methods in her contribution to other projects, to inform the design of technologies and services implemented across a variety of settings (e.g., healthcare; schools; mental health clinics; community organizations). Personally, she’s quite the homebody and nerds out on all things related to cross-stitching, puzzles, tea, and cats (don’t hate, she has a dog she loves too).
Contact
750 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 1000 Chicago, IL 60611
We currently have the proper tools to effectively eliminate new HIV infections in the US; however, implementation of these technologies is poor and highly inequitable. Dennis Li, PhD, MPH, and his team aim to help close the gap between research evidence and real-world practice by developing and evaluating strategies to improve delivery and uptake of these tools, particularly among marginalized communities.
The team partners closely with the Chicago Department of Public Health and Chicagoland HIV service agencies to understand and enhance their models of care:
Configurations of Linkage, Engagement, And Retention Strategies for HIV (CLEARS-HIV) is characterizing barriers, facilitators, and best practices for care engagement.
Assessing a Centralized Care Engagement and Syndemics Strategy for HIV (ACCESS-HIV) is evaluating implementation of the HIV Resource HUB and preparing it for scale-out to other jurisdictions.
Collaborative to Enhance Access for Suppression to End HIV (CEASE-HIV) is adapting a model of low-barrier care for people with complex needs to be implemented and evaluated in Chicago clinics.
In addition, the team contributes dissemination and implementation science expertise to various intervention trials and other initiatives.
Contact
633 North Saint Clair Street Suite 20-040 Chicago, IL 60611
The Resilience Education to Advance Community Healing (REACH) Statewide Initiative is supported by Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER II) from the U.S Department of Education. REACH goals are: 1) To prepare educators and schools to support student mental health and resilience via trauma-informed policies and practices; 2) to foster educators’ personal and professional resilience and self-care; and 3) to assist districts in creating school mental health structures and data-riven approaches to addressing trauma and building resilience. CCR is partnering with the American Institutes of Research and Loyola University Chicago to conduct a mixed-methods analysis of the REACH implementation and outcomes.
National Center for Safe Supportive Schools (NCS3) is a SAMHSA-funded center within the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). The mission is to provide states, districts, and schools with the knowledge and tools to implement culturally responsive, trauma-informed policies and practices that promote equity and well-being.
Stress and Coping Toolkit — In partnership with Chicago Public Schools, the Center for Childhood Resilience at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital developed and piloted the Stress and Coping Toolkit. The Toolkit is designed for ease of delivery by classroom teachers and expands upon existing Social Emotional Learning curricula by integrating Mental Health Literacy content and by including a greater emphasis on understanding and coping with stress, trauma, and grief. CCR launched a hybrid implementation-effectiveness trial in 2024 to examine whether the Toolkit reduces barriers to mental health treatment and improves mental health literacy, emotional, and academic functioning. A mixed-methods approach is being utilized to examine feasibility, acceptability, and adoption of the Toolkit.
Strengthening Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups (STRONG) — In partnership with Loyola University Chicago and Chicago Public Schools, STRONG uses a group randomized mixed-methods design to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of the STRONG school-based intervention (Hoover, 2018) in promoting mental health and resilience among newcomer students.
Contact
680 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 13-084 Chicago, IL 60611
The Family CARE Parenting Lab led by Heather Risser, PhD, provides families and communities with a variety of resources, training and technical support to promote child, family and community wellness. Their team includes community stakeholders, family advisory members and university staff and students. Their projects are listed below:
Family Navigation The Foster Parent Family Navigation Program aims to build foster parent capacity to 1) recognize their child’s mental health needs, 2) find and enroll the child in evidence-based treatment; 3) manage their child’s mental health treatment and 4) support treatment goals in the home and community.
Parental Emotion Regulation Skills Harnessing e-Learning for Parental Emotion Regulation Skills (HELPERS) aims to build parent capacity to manage stress and negative emotion to improve the effectiveness of their parenting.
Specialized Foster Parent Support There are several related aims to the overarching Foster Parent Support project. First, they asses prospective and current foster parent perspectives to identify opportunities to provide resources to sustain placement for children with high levels of need. Second, they work with foster-parent-serving agencies to provide resources for foster parents.
Community Partner Training and Technical Support They provide training and technical support to 30 community partners across Illinois to support violence prevention and intervention.
Health Equity in Persons with Disabilities They are engaged with several community partners in identifying strengths, needs and resources for Black adults living with disabilities accessing community services.
Contact
710 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 1221 Chicago, IL 60611
Andrea Russell, PhD's research to date has focused on psychosocial functioning in adults with multiple chronic conditions, chronic disease self-management, and risk communication. Two major themes in her research involve the ability and the capacity to manage health. Related to ability, she has been closely involved in work focused on characterizing communication failures and improving communication via direct interventions, including creating and testing tailored educational materials and health system/electronic health record solutions. Related to capacity, she has studied how factors such as stress (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic), anxiety, and depression occur with greater frequency among adults with chronic disease, especially multiple chronic conditions, and explored how these are related to certain health behaviors and medication management.
Dr. Russell is a member of the Center for Applied Health Research on Aging. The mission of CAHRA is to conduct research promoting informed decision making and actions leading to optimal health and well-being among individuals and families over the life span.
Contact
750 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 1000 Chicago, IL 60611
The interdisciplinary group co-led by Linda Teplin, PhD, includes faculty-level research investigators, research assistants, interviewers, statistical programmers, data processors, administrative and support staff, as well as graduate students enrolled in the Clinical Psychology PhD and master’s programs in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Results from their research studies have provided the needed empirical data to guide U.S. policy: Findings have been cited in Supreme Court amicus briefs, congressional hearings and surgeon general’s reports. We are currently conducting two studies: the Northwestern Juvenile Project and the Northwestern Juvenile Project: Next Generation. Begun in 1995, the Northwestern Juvenile Project is the first large-scale longitudinal study of psychiatric disorders, antisocial and criminal behaviors and adult outcomes of juvenile detainees. Next Generation is the first intergenerational study of this special population. The group is investigating the characteristics that promote resilience among the children of the original participants in the Northwestern Juvenile Project. By identifying the strengths of children, their parents, social networks and communities, they will determine what experiences promote mental health, healthy relationships and educational attainment.
Contact
710 North Lake Shore Drive Suite 900 Chicago, IL 60611
