SIRC Officer Candidates

Ana A. Baumann, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis (WU). Her research focuses at the intersection of implementation science and health equity, with projects with diverse populations both in the United States and internationally. She is also co-director of the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core (DIRC), a methods core of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences at WU.

I believe I am the best candidate for President because my work aligns with the SIRC mission: I have worked for years with vulnerable populations as a certified parent interventionist, coach, and fidelity rater. My work as a researcher spans different areas (mental health, sickle cell, hypertension) both in the US and elsewhere – all with a common thread of supporting the uptake of evidence-based interventions for vulnerable populations. Additionally, as a Latina woman, I believe I can bring my personal insight to help SIRC expand its reach and achieve its mission of facilitating communication and collaboration between researchers and community providers both in the US and around the world.

Byron Powell, PhD, is an assistant professor and co-director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. His work primarily has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and focuses on 1) identifying contextual determinants of implementing evidence-based practices in routine care; 2) identifying, developing, tailoring, and evaluating implementation strategies to address contextual determinants; and 3) advancing methodology in implementation research and practice. Byron is on the editorial boards of Implementation Science and Implementation Research and Practice, and he has served as an expert faculty member for national training initiatives including the Implementation Research Institute, Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (TIDIRH), TIDIRH-Ireland, TIDIRH-Australia, and the Knowledge Translation Canada Summer Institute.

I am humbled to have the opportunity to run for SIRC president, as I consider it my professional home and have been actively involved from its inception. SIRC’s priorities to promote innovative and rigorous research; nurture partnerships between diverse stakeholders across practice, policy, and research contexts; and support individuals and teams at every career stage to persist in the difficult work of improving the quality of care are highly consistent with my personal and professional aspirations. I am well-prepared to serve as president given my experience leading and collaborating on partnered research, training, and capacity building efforts in implementation research and practice. It would be an honor to collaborate with you all to advance the mission of SIRC, invite and involve an increasingly diverse community, and extend our collective impact internationally. Thank you for your consideration!

Alicia Bunger, MSW, PhD is an Associate Professor at the College of Social Work at the Ohio State University. Her research addresses the central question: how can human service organizations and professionals work together to improve service access, quality, and outcomes for the communities they serve? Currently, she is investigating strategies for implementing interventions that depend on collaboration across child welfare and behavioral health systems.

As SIRC continues to grow and evolve, we’ll need good systems in place that keep us organized, and clear accounts of our decisions. I believe I would be a great SIRC Secretary because of my planning, organizational, and detail-management skills. During my early professional experiences coordinating and supporting a regional health services planning coalition, I learned the value of and skills for creating systems and procedures, planning, clearly documenting key decisions, and managing tasks to support collaboration. I would really enjoy bringing these skills to support our SIRC community.

Taren M. Swindle is an Assistant Professor in Family and Preventive Medicine within the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Broadly, her research program focuses on understanding and improving health and developmental outcomes for children impacted by poverty. She is interested in increasing adoption of evidence-based practices and interventions in community settings.

I will bring an energy for organization and clarity to advance the SIRC mission. I have experience with managing meetings and keeping detailed records across multiple projects. The fun is in the details!

Sarah Birken, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, Director of the Program on Implementation and Organization Research (PrIOR) at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, and an Associate Member of Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on middle managers’ role in implementing evidence-based practices, the implementation of innovations in cancer care, and the selection and application of implementation theories. She also co-hosts AcaDames, a podcast about women in academia.

The SIRC communications chair organizes and coordinates marketing and social networking. Two of my ongoing roles put me in an excellent position to excel as communications chair: As founder and co-host of AcaDames, I have experienced success in marketing and social networking to promote the podcast, with 10k+ downloads in the first two seasons alone. As chair of my children’s school’s task force on climate change, I launched a marketing and social networking campaign to enhance our community’s efforts to protect the Earth, using creative approaches including climate change school curricula and media campaigns to make the school an engine-idling-free zone.

Jonathan Purtle, DrPH, MSc in an Assistant Professor at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health. His research focuses on the dissemination of mental health evidence to public policymakers and health politics. His training is in public health policy and sociology.

I believe I would be a good SIRC Communications Officer because of my research expertise in dissemination. I will provide strategic thinking about how to spread knowledge about what implementation science is and what it can offer to researchers and practitioners   across fields and contexts.

Lisa Saldana, PhD is a Senior Scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center. Her research focuses on intervention development and implementation of evidence-based practice, with an emphasis on public youth and family service systems. Lisa and her colleagues have developed methods related to implementation process and resource use, as well as behavioral interventions.

I am honored to be nominated to serve as Social Chair for an organization that supports a diverse range of innovative implementation practitioners and researchers, and actively works to build bridges across fields. One of the reasons that I love participating in SIRC opportunities is because of the amazing individuals who are a part of the network. If selected, I look forward to working with the Leadership team to create occasions to expand these social connections as new implementation researchers and practitioners enter the field, and to facilitating the ongoing positive, supportive, and fun social environment of the membership.

Will Aldridge, PhD, is Advanced Implementation Specialist and Director of The Impact Center at FPG Child Development Institute, UNC-Chapel Hill . He is also Adjunct Assistant Professor at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health; Board member of the National Prevention Science Coalition; Steering Committee member of the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health; and Affiliate Faculty at Penn State’s Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center. Will’s work includes active implementation support and evaluation research on the implementation and scale-up of evidence-based prevention/wellbeing strategies in communities and state, regional, and national service systems.

As an implementation practitioner working out of an academic setting, my work focuses on (1) developing and evaluating models and strategies for implementation practice and (2) providing implementation support directly to providers and policymakers to catalyze the impact of their implementation and scaling initiatives. Additionally, I have experience and skills related to organizational development. Beyond my role as a founding director of The Impact Center at FPG, I participate on a Board and committees of two other national groups. I also have experience and skills related to conference planning, having previously provided support for planning and running the 2013 Global Implementation Conference and the 2015 NCTSN Implementation Summit’s Evaluation Track.

Ryan Lindsay, MSW, LCSW, is the Assistant Dean for Social Work and Associate Professor of Practice at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. His practice focuses on improving successful and sustainable implementation of evidence-based treatments and practices to improve behavioral health outcomes- specifically Dialectical Behavior Therapy in Residential Care and Community Mental Health Centers, Prolonged Exposure Therapy in Forensic Settings, and Motivational Interviewing in a variety of human service organizations. Additionally, his research also includes examining and improving implementation of suicide prevention policies and practices in schools. In 2009 he co-founded Sparlin Mental Health in an effort to fill gaps in access to evidence-based mental health services in the St. Louis region.

As both an expert in multiple evidence-based behavioral health interventions, an organizational co-founder and leader, and social work educator and administrator, I have extensive knowledge and experience translating implementation science frameworks, models, and tools into practice. However, I am also very interested in how we can narrow this gap between science and practice to increase the consumption, uptake, and utilization of this critically important science in the service of improving outcomes in our communities. It would be an honor to leverage this position in the service of narrowing this gap and fostering fruitful academic-practitioner partnerships. 

Beth McGinty, PhD, MS is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Her research focuses on studying the implementation and outcomes of mental health and substance use policies.

My work includes a strong focus on research-policy/practice translation, and as such I am dedicated to building and engaging strong networks of practice partners. The Practitioner Network of Expertise Chair is a good fit with my interests and experience; I am enthusiastic about this opportunity as a potential avenue to become more involved in SIRC.

Sapana R. Patel, PhD is the Director of Strategic Planning and Curriculum Development at the Center for Practice Innovations (CPI), a nationally known intermediary organization, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University Medical Center and Research Associate of the New York State Office of Mental Health Center for Excellence in Cultural Competence at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her implementation research and practice focuses on the improvement of behavioral health care delivery for underserved individuals with serious mental illness.

I am humbled to be nominated for Chair of the Practitioner Network of Expertise (NoE). My background and more than a decade of experience in roles of  sub-networks of the NoE including providers (as a licensed bilingual [Spanish-speaking] clinical psychologist),  intermediaries (as a Director of CPI), and policy makers/administrators (as the liaison  between CPI and the New York State Office of Mental Health) make me well suited for this SIRC officer position.  I have experience with facilitating dialogue and identifying shared interests among diverse stakeholders including researchers, policy makers, providers, agency leadership, managed care organizations and local and state health authorities. My work has focused on understanding the challenges faced in evidence-based practice implementation and developing feasible solutions informed by the reality of service provision and implementation science. As an IRI alumnus and investigator, I am also committed to increasing shared learning and collaboration between researchers and practitioners and believe this is critical to increase the direct, real-world impact of our work. I would be honored to have the  opportunity to help advance the SIRC mission to bridge science and practice and represent the interests and advocate for its practice-oriented members.

Margaret Crane is a third year clinical psychology graduate student working with Dr. Philip Kendall at Temple University. She graduated from Harvard University in 2014 with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Global Health and Health Policy, and she completed her post-baccalaureate research with Professor Matthew Sanders at The University of Queensland in Australia researching the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. Margaret is interested in mental health literacy and examining strategies to increase pull demand of evidence-based programs. 

I think I would be a good SIRC Student Representative because I am very organized and am enthusiastic about creating opportunities to enhance student resources and networking opportunities within SIRC. I currently serve on the ABCT DIS SIG Student Workgroup, and I hope to create resources both with and independent of the DIS SIG. A few ideas I have for SIRC initiatives: adding researchers’ emails to the Network of Expertise lists, having a media training at SIRC 2021 (how to connect with the media, how to prepare, how to respond to questions to convey your message), and creating a webinar on ethical issues in D&I science (generally useful, and particularly helpful as a training activity for grant applications).

Sara Malone, LCSW, is a doctoral student at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on understanding the intersection of quality improvement, healthcare services research, and implementation science in hospital settings through utilization of systems science.

First, I would love to use this position to think critically about how we create lasting, positive mentorship relationships. I have served as an implementation facilitator prior to returning to the doctoral program, and am interested in how we integrate implementation practice further into the work of SIRC. I would love to work with the SIRC team to think about how to better serve the implementation science community!

Jared Martin, M.A., is a PhD student at Ohio State University in Human Development and Family Science. Prior to starting his doctorate program, Jared worked for the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse where he disseminated information and resources on the selection & implementation of evidence-based practices to child welfare and community-based agencies. Jared is currently serving as a research assistant for Dr. Alicia Bunger on an implementation study to align cross-system collaborative efforts between child welfare and behavioral health to address the opioid crisis.

I am a good fit for the SIRC Student Representative Officer role because of my experience and training. First, I have completed introductory coursework in Dissemination and Implementation Science in Health, taught by researchers at the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC). This will aid in the review and matching process for students in the Network of Expertise. I also have experience in assisting with coordinating large international conference gathers, which will be helpful in planning student events at the biennial SIRC conferences. As a Student Representative Officer, I will work hard to represent the interests of SIRC student members and ensure their needs are fully supported.