Recognition October 2018

Cara C. Lewis delivers implementation science keynote at the Institute for Translational Research Fall Symposium

Associate Investigator and MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation scientist Cara C. Lewis, PhD, presented the keynote lecture at the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Translational Research Fall Symposium on October 4, 2018.

“From Classification to Causality: Optimizing the Impact of Implementation Strategies with Theory and Measurement” described a five-year tailored implementation project led by Dr. Lewis in conjunction with the Beck Institute and Wolverine Human Services, a network of residential treatment centers housing teens throughout the state of Michigan. Dr. Lewis and her colleagues set out to bring CBT into the Wolverine organization in the hopes that a program tailored for this population could more effectively support their resident youth, who live with multiple mental health conditions; at least two-thirds of Wolverine clients report mental and behavioral health care needs.

The project was a stunning success: Wolverine trained all staff in CBT and embedded an endorsement system to ensure sustainability of the program. Dr. Lewis walked symposium attendees through Wolverine’s thoughtful and precise CBT implementation and shared lessons learned. “A methodology for generating a tailored implementation blueprint: an exemplar from a youth residential setting” provides more background on this project.

Dr. Lewis is an international leader in implementation science, past president of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC), and co-founding editor-in-chief of the forthcoming SIRC journal. A clinical psychologist, she is also affiliate faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. Her research interests include identifying strategies to improve community mental and behavioral health care through the integration of evidence-based practices.