TY - JOUR
T1 - The implementation research institute
T2 - Training mental health implementation researchers in the United States
AU - Proctor, Enola K.
AU - Landsverk, John
AU - Baumann, Ana A.
AU - Mittman, Brian S.
AU - Aarons, Gregory A.
AU - Brownson, Ross C.
AU - Glisson, Charles
AU - Chambers, David
N1 - Funding Information:
year fellow with travel funds to support a two to three day visit to an active implementation research site supported by highly competitive federal funding. Working closely with NIH and VA program officers and informed by NIH Reporter searches, Proctor, Landsverk and Baumann identify sites of state-of-the-art IR that reflect good science and partnership models. See Table 3 for examples of learning sites that fellows have visited.
Funding Information:
Guided by these assumptions and the assessment of need, the authors of this paper shaped an R25 proposal, first submitted to the NIMH in 2007 and eventually funded in 2009. The IRI was established with core funding from the NIMH R25 grant and supplementary funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This interdisciplinary training program provides didactic training, faculty mentoring (both local and distance), support and guidance for pilot research and grant writing, and additional experiential learning—all focused on helping participants develop implementation research projects for competitive external funding. Part of the experiential learning involves observation of agency-and research-implementation efforts in mental health settings. Fellows are PhD and/or MD investigators from a variety of health-related fields, with demonstrated experience and enthusiasm in the study of mental healthcare, who wish to conduct groundbreaking research in the area of implementation science. Next, we describe the IRI components, outcomes to date, and participant experiences with the Institute.
Funding Information:
Selected fellows comprise a diverse group of participants from various disciplines (i.e., psychology, social work, pediatrics, psychiatry, anthropology; epidemiology; see Table 2 for more details), institutions, and geography to build a national network of implementation researchers. All IRI fellows have entered the program with at least one externally-funded grant, primarily to eliminate the need to address basic grant writing and enable it to focus on implementation science. While all fellows enter the IRI at early stages of implementation science knowledge, they vary in terms of career stage and prior accomplishments. Fellows range from one year out of their terminal degree programs (PhD, post-doc, or M.D.) to Full Professor. Several entered with more limited publication records (minimum number of publications for an entering fellow to date is 13), but more experienced fellows had more than 50 publications. Fellows similarly vary in prior research grant experience. Many enter with one funded grant (and for one fellow, this was an F31 dissertation grant), while several have received R03’s, R34’s, and career development awards. However, none of these grants were in implementation science. This marked variation in background and experience poses challenges for the development and delivery of the training program, as detailed below.
Funding Information:
Over its first three years, the IRI has recruited three cohorts for a total of 31 fellows (in the first year, IRI had 11 slots, followed by 10 slots for years two and three). These fellows have been selected from a total pool of 86 applicants from a wide range of academic settings and disciplines as shown in Table 2. Fellows from the first three cohorts (n = 31) completing their two-year training periods (2009–2011, 2010–2012, and 2012–2013) have submitted 74 proposals for scientific projects and received 52 (70%) funded awards. The funding mechanisms varied: 21% were NIH R01 grants, 21% VA projects, 11% NIH R34 grants, 8% NIH K grants, and the remaining 34% are grants from other mechanisms, such as CDC, AHRQ, and Fogarty (Please see Table 5). The new research supported by the IRI training will generate new findings in the emerging field of implementation science with promise to accelerate the availability and quality of evidence-based mental healthcare.
PY - 2013/9/5
Y1 - 2013/9/5
N2 - Background: The Implementation Research Institute (IRI) provides two years of training in mental health implementation science for 10 new fellows each year. The IRI is supported by a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) R25 grant and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Fellows attend two annual week-long trainings at Washington University in St. Louis. Training is provided through a rigorous curriculum, local and national mentoring, a 'learning site visit' to a federally funded implementation research project, pilot research, and grant writing.Methods: This paper describes the rationale, components, outcomes to date, and participant experiences with IRI.Results: IRI outcomes include 31 newly trained implementation researchers, their new grant proposals, contributions to other national dissemination and implementation research training, and publications in implementation science authored by the Core Faculty and fellows. Former fellows have obtained independent research funding in implementation science and are beginning to serve as mentors for more junior investigators.Conclusions: Based on the number of implementation research grant proposals and papers produced by fellows to date, the IRI is proving successful in preparing new researchers who can inform the process of making evidence-based mental healthcare more available through real-world settings of care and who are advancing the field of implementation science.
AB - Background: The Implementation Research Institute (IRI) provides two years of training in mental health implementation science for 10 new fellows each year. The IRI is supported by a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) R25 grant and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Fellows attend two annual week-long trainings at Washington University in St. Louis. Training is provided through a rigorous curriculum, local and national mentoring, a 'learning site visit' to a federally funded implementation research project, pilot research, and grant writing.Methods: This paper describes the rationale, components, outcomes to date, and participant experiences with IRI.Results: IRI outcomes include 31 newly trained implementation researchers, their new grant proposals, contributions to other national dissemination and implementation research training, and publications in implementation science authored by the Core Faculty and fellows. Former fellows have obtained independent research funding in implementation science and are beginning to serve as mentors for more junior investigators.Conclusions: Based on the number of implementation research grant proposals and papers produced by fellows to date, the IRI is proving successful in preparing new researchers who can inform the process of making evidence-based mental healthcare more available through real-world settings of care and who are advancing the field of implementation science.
KW - Dissemination research
KW - Implementation research
KW - Training
KW - Translational research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84883460985&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/1748-5908-8-105
DO - 10.1186/1748-5908-8-105
M3 - Article
C2 - 24007290
AN - SCOPUS:84883460985
SN - 1748-5908
VL - 8
JO - Implementation Science
JF - Implementation Science
IS - 1
M1 - 105
ER -