Improving the Implementation and Sustainment of Evidenced Based Practices in Mental Health: Developing and Piloting the Collaborative Organizational Approach to Selecting and Tailoring Implementation Strategies

The purpose of this study is to partner with the North Carolina Child Treatment Program (NC CTP) and the SAMHSA-funded National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) to develop and pilot the Collaborative Organizational Approach to Selecting and Tailoring Implementation Strategies (COAST-IS). The COAST-IS intervention will involve coaching organizational leaders and therapists to use Intervention Mapping to select and tailor strategies. Intervention Mapping is a multistep process that is inherently ecological and incorporates theory, evidence, and stakeholder perspectives to ensure that intervention components effectively address key determinants of change. After collaboratively developing COAST-IS in Year 1, the investigators will conduct a randomized pilot trial of the intervention within an NC CTP learning collaborative, randomly assigning eight organizations to the learning collaborative-only condition or the learning collaborative plus COAST-IS condition. Participants will include organizational leaders (e.g., CEOs/Directors, Clinical Directors, Supervisors) and therapists (e.g., Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Psychologists, Licensed Professional Counselors). The investigators will evaluate COAST-IS in the following aims: 1) to assess the acceptability, appropriateness, feasibility, and utility of COAST-IS; 2) to evaluate organizational stakeholders' fidelity to the core elements of Intervention Mapping; and 3) to demonstrate the feasibility of testing COAST-IS in a larger effectiveness trial. This work is significant because it will yield a systematic method that integrates theory, evidence, and stakeholder perspectives to improve the effectiveness and precision of implementation strategies. Ultimately, COAST-IS may have the potential to improve implementation and sustainment of a wide-range of EBPs in mental health and other health sectors.