Mechanisms Network of Expertise: Who We Are

PRINCIPLE INVESTIGATOR

Cara C. Lewis, PhD

Associate Investigator, MacColl Center for Health Care
Innovation & Senior Investigator,

Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Research focuses on advancing pragmatic and rigorous measures and
methods for implementation science and practice and informing tailored
implementation of evidence-based practices. Research includes children,
adolescents, and adults with social, economic, or basic resource needs.

MNoE Investigative Team

Gregory A. Aarons PhD

Professor, Psychiatry

University of California

Director

Child and Adolescent Services Research Center

Research focuses on improving system and organizational factors that
support implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices,
community-academic partnerships, use of research evidence, and quality of
care in health and allied health care settings in the US and internationally.

Rinad S. Beidas, PhD

Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Medical Ethics and Health Policy

University of Pennsylvania

Director

Penn Implementation Science Center at the Leonard Davis Institute of
Health Economics (PISCE@LDI)

Research focuses on partnering with community stakeholders to test
multilevel implementations strategies, informed by behavioral economics to implement
evidence-based practices (EBPs) in children’s behavioral health and pediatric
primary care, many of which serve inner-city and low-income, ethnic and
racial minority youth.

Aaron R. Lyon, PhD

Associate Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

University of Washington (UW)

Director

UW School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART)
Center

Research focuses on improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and
accessibility of EBPs for traditionally-underserved children, adolescents,
and families, served in low resource community and school settings.
Particular emphasis on user-centered design of interventions and
implementation strategies to improve their implementability.

Brian S. Mittman, PhD

Senior Scientist

Kaiser Permanente, Dept of Research and Evaluation

Co-lead, Implementation & Improvement Science Initiative

UCLA Clinical Translational Science Institute

Leading efforts to strengthen the field of implementation science as
well as health services quality improvement efforts, including facilitating
collaborations between researchers and policy and practice leaders. Research
includes children, the elderly, and individuals with chronic conditions or
special health care needs.

Byron J. Powell, PhD, LCSW

Assistant Professor, Health Policy & Management

Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis

Byron’s research focuses on efforts to improve the quality of
behavioral health and social services. His scholarship has focused on
barriers and facilitators to implementing evidence-based practices; advancing
implementation research methods; and designing, tailoring and assessing the
effectiveness of implementation strategies.

Bryan J. Weiner, PhD

Professor, Global Health and Health Services

University of Washington

Research has contributed new theories and measures to advance the
study of organizational factors associated with effective implementation of
EBPs, for example, cancer screening practices to improve patient care and
outcomes in diverse delivery settings, especially for individuals in need of
chronic care and end-of-life health care.

Nathaniel Williams, PhD, LCSW

Assistant Professor, Social Work

Boise State University

Research focuses on improving access to EBPs among low-income
children receiving services in outpatient mental health settings, through use
of implementation strategies targeting organizational culture, climate, and
leadership.

Expanded MNoE

Bianca Albers, MSc; MA

Chair

European Implementation Collaborative

PhD Candidate

University of Melbourne, Australia

Focused on building the capacity within organisations and services to
develop, implement and sustain evidence-informed practices and policies;
research focuses on the utility of implementation frameworks and ways to
support high-quality implementation practice

Patricia Areán, PhD

Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

University of Washington

Leads a research and training group known for improving the reach,
usability, and quality of psychosocial treatments for mood among low-income,
ethnic minority, and geriatric populations in primary care settings.

Geoffrey Curran, PhD, MA

Director, Center for Implementation Research & Professor

University of Arkansas

Research Health Scientist

Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System

Research focuses on testing strategies aimed at provider and
organization level to support the uptake and sustainment of EBPs, including
those for cancer, diabetes, substance abuse, and psychiatric disorders. His
work involves rural, urban, and minority populations served in outpatient,
inpatient, and community settings.

Laura J. Damschroder, MS, MPH

Research Investigator & Implementation Research Coordinator

VA Ann Arbor Center for Clinical Management Research (CCMR) &
PROVE QUERI Program

Research focuses on implementation research methods and practice. She
is the lead author of the widely used Consolidated Framework for
Implementation Research (CFIR) which is among the top cited articles in
implementation science. She has worked on a wide range of topics but most of
her work has focused on US Veteran populations and behavioral change
interventions within and outside VA. She is also Adjunct Assistant Professor
at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Maria E. Fernandez, PhD

Lorne Bain Distinguished Professor in Health and Medicine, a
Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences

University of Texas, Houston

Director

Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research (CHPPR)

Dr. Fernandez’s research has focused on implementation science and
cancer control in both community and clinical settings, particularly among
underserved populations. She has conducted studies that range from the
development and evaluation of new interventions to the science of
understanding and intervening to accelerate the use of evidence-based
interventions in real- world settings.

Russell Glasgow, PhD, MS

Professor, Director

ACCORDS Dissemination & Implementation Research Program, University
of Colorado, School of Medicine

Developer of the RE-AIM framework. Research focuses on improving
public health and health care systems, especially through use of
self-management support tools and pragmatic patient-centered measures for
chronic care and elderly patients in low resource community health clinics
that serve Latino, Native American, and low-income patients with complex
chronic care needs.

Jeremy Grimshaw, MBCHB, PHD

Senior Scientist, Clinical Epidemiology Program

Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

Full Professor, Department Medicine, University of Ottawa, Canada

University of Ottawa, Canada

Research focuses on the evaluation of Knowledge Translation and
Implementation (KTI) strategies, targeting healthcare professionals (HCPs)
and health systems. Evidence-practice gaps resulting from KTI failures lead
to suboptimal patient care, prevent access to the benefits from advances in
healthcare and inefficient use of scarce healthcare resources.

Amy Kilbourne, PhD, MPH

Director, Quality Enhancement Research Initiative

US Department of Veteran Affairs

Research embraces academic-community partnerships with an emphasis on
implementation strategies that reduce disparities in priority populations,
including rural, inner-city, veterans, and populations with special
healthcare needs.

Christian Helfrich, PhD

Research Associate Professor, Health Services

 University of Washington

Research Scientist

VA Puget Sound

Co-PI of VA’s QUERI program examining de-implementation of harmful
and ineffective clinical practices. Research focuses on improving access to
care, implementation of EBPs in clinical settings, de-implementation of
harmful clinical practices, and assessing organizational factors to improve team-based
care, especially for low-income patients and those with chronic care needs.

JoAnn Kirchner, MD

Principal Investigator

VA Behavioral Health Quality Enhancement Research Initiative

Professor, Department of Psychiatry

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Directs the Behavioral Health QUERI. Expert in facilitation who has
served diverse populations and settings such as VA Community Based Outpatient
Clinics, rural FQHCs, and rural medical centers serving disproportionately
low income and racial minority patients.

Hopin Lee, PhD

NHMRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

University of Oxford

Research focuses on learning how things work, or why they do not.
This primarily involves methodological and applied work that aims to
understand the causal mechanisms of complex interventions in clinical and
community settings.

Per Nilsen, PhD

Professor of Social Medicine and Public Health

Linköping University

Per Nilsen is a Professor of Social Medicine and Public Health, with
a particular focus on implementation science, at Linköping University,
Sweden. He was responsible for building a research program on implementation
science at Linköping University. He leads several projects on implementation
of changes in health and welfare. Nilsen has developed Master and
doctoral-level implementation courses, which have run annually since 2011.
The PhD course attracts students from the Nordic countries and beyond. Nilsen
takes particular interest in issues concerning practice change and the use of
theories, models and frameworks for improved understanding and explanation of
implementation challenges.

Michael Parchman, MD, MPH

Senior Investigator

MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation

Senior Investigator

KPWHRI

Nationally recognized scholar in chronic illness care research using
complexity science to explore how diverse health care teams can work together
to achieve high-quality care. His recent work focuses on de-implementing
harmful and ineffective clinical practices, including with rural, low income,
and elderly populations.

Enola Proctor, PhD

Director, Center for Mental Health Services Research

Washington University in St. Louis

Professor Emeritus

Washington University in St. Louis

Leads several national initiatives to advance the science of
dissemination and implementation research, including the NIMH funded
Implementation Research Institute. Research focuses on testing strategies
such as remote supervision for collaborative care and organizational
strategies in child mental health settings.

Lisa Saldana, PhD

Senior Research Scientist

Oregon Social Learning Center

Research focuses on development, evaluation, and implementation of
EBPs, such as Multisystemic Therapy and R3 for child welfare workers. Tests
implementation strategies such as coaching, training, and implementation
fidelity monitoring to support EBPs for children and ethnic and racial
minority families served in low resourced child welfare and community
settings typically in inner-city and rural areas.

Anne Sales, PhD, RN

Professor, Learning Health Sciences

Learning Health Sciences, University of Michigan

Research Scientist

VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System

Co-Editor in Chief

Implementation Science Communications (companion journal to
Implementation Science, opened for submissions July 2019)

Leads a VA QUERI program supporting the implementation of goals of
care conversations among seriously ill, frail elderly and vulnerable Veteran
adults, including under-represented minorities and people with dementia. Also
co-Program Director of an NHLBI-funded K12 training program in implementation
science.

Sonja K. Schoenwald, PhD

Senior Research Scientist

Oregon Social Learning Center

Research focuses on implementation of effective mental health
treatment and services for youth and families in challenging community
contexts and on the measurement of treatment fidelity in such contexts.
Pioneered the development and testing of quality assurance protocols used to
implement Multisystemic Therapy (MST®) for youth involved in juvenile justice
systems and their families and its adaptations for other target populations
and service sectors.

Donna Shelley, MD, MPH

Professor

New York University School of Medicine

Research focuses on optimizing  dissemination and implementation of
evidence based tobacco use treatment  in a wide range of safety net health
care deliver settings and studying implementation of tobacco control
policies.

Aubyn Stahmer, PhD

Professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and the MIND
Institute

University of California, Davis

Research focuses on translating evidence-based research to
community-based practices serving children with autism, including Hispanic,
African American, rural, inner city, and low income populations.

Jonathan Tobin, PhD

Clinical Professor

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

President/CEO

Clinical Directors Network (CDN)

Research focuses on implementing large, multi-site, clinical trials
and observational studies with community health centers. Under his leadership
at CDN, nearly 175,000 low income and minority patients have entered into
studies on lifestyle interventions, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases,
depression, and other disorders.

Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, PhD

Associate Professor

National Center for PTSD

Implementation Scientist, Acting Deputy Director

Stanford University

Research focuses on facilitating sustained, high-quality delivery of
EBPs, and assessing and understanding the outcomes related to their fidelity
and adaptation, in public sector mental health settings.

Katie Witkiewitz, PhD

Professor, Psychology

University of New Mexico

Research focuses on mechanisms of addictive behavior relapse and
treatment. Adapts EBPs for addiction in community programs, including
Hispanic- and transgender-serving agencies and the Indian Health Service.

Student Co-Leads

Stephanie Brewer

Postdoctoral Fellow, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

University of Washington

Stephanie’s research focuses on (1) developing school-based
interventions that are easy to implement, contextually relevant, and
culturally responsive; and (2) improving the implementation of contextually
relevant, culturally responsive EBTs in schools. She was awarded a Ruth L.
Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F32) to better understand what
modifications are made to EBTs in real-world practice contexts, thereby
allowing future projects to optimize the implementation of EBTs in accessible
service settings such as schools.

Gracelyn Cruden

Postdoctoral Scientist

Oregon Social Learning Center

Gracelyn is interesting in supporting decision making around the
selection and implementation of evidence-based programs to prevent child
maltreatment as well as mental health and substance use disorders, primarily
at the community level. She utilizes systems science and decision science
methods such as system dynamics and multi-criteria decision analysis to
collaboratively engage stakeholders. A secondary line of research aligns with
her training in health services research as she explores the role of unmet
mental health needs and substance misuse as well as the integration of
primary care and parenting programs.

Sarah Vejnoska

PhD Student, Psychology

University of California, Davis

Sarah is interested in the dissemination and implementation of
evidence-based practices to underserved families of children with autism
spectrum disorder.

Rebecca Lengnick-Hall

NIMH T32 Postdoctoral Fellow

Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis

Rebecca’s research focuses on understanding how organizations and
systems adapt (in both planned and unplanned ways) over the course of EBP
implementation.

Ann Nguyen, PhD MPH

Postdoctoral Fellow, Population Health

New York University

Research focuses on organizational factors associated with effective
implementation of evidence-based practices. For example, cardiovascular
disease prevention guidelines to improve care quality and outcomes in primary
care practices, particularly for underserved populations.

Simone Schriger

PhD Student, Clinical Psychology

University of Pennsylvania

Simone is interested in studying the implementation and sustainment
of evidence-based mental health practices in low-resource settings, with the
aim of closing the mental health treatment gap. She is particularly
interested in the study of clinical supervision practices and in
task-shifting/sharing approaches. Simone has worked in a number of low-income
contexts, and has experience using qualitative and community-based
participatory research approaches.

Amber Haley

Doctoral Student

UNC Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health

Amber Haley is a PhD Candidate in Gillings School of Global Public
Health in Health Policy and Management with a concentration in Implementation
Science. Before beginning her PhD training, she served as the Associate Director
for Community-Engaged Research at the Center for Clinical and Translational
Research at Virginia Commonwealth University and facilitated a
community-academic research partnership at the Center on Society and Health.
Her current research focuses on intersections in stakeholder engagement,
social determinants of health, and implementation science.

Callie Walsh-Bailey

PhD Student, Public Health Sciences

Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis

Callie is interested in implementation of best practices to improve
chronic illness care, especially for individuals whose conditions may be
exacerbated by social, economic, and behavioral needs. She has experience
using qualitative research methods and conducting systematic reviews.