Meet the experts - 4th UK Implementation Science Research Conference

Gregory

Aarons

Gregory Aarons, PhD is Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego, Co-Director of the UCSD Dissemination and Implementation Science Center (UCSD-DISC), and Director of the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC). Dr Aarons is a clinical and organisational psychologist who focuses on improving behavioral health care in service systems in the US and internationally. He is co-developer of the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework (https://episframework.com). His research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control, and the W.T. Grant Foundation focuses on identifying and improving system, organisational, and individual factors that support implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices and quality of care in health and allied health care settings. Much of Dr Aarons’ work focuses on aligning and testing leadership and organisation support strategies and training managers to become effective leaders to support evidence-based practice implementation and sustainment in behavioral health (https://implementationleadership.com). His implementation and scale-up strategies are being used and tested in behavioral health, schools, child welfare, HIV prevention, and trauma treatment in the US, Norway, and West Africa. His most recent work is in developing and fostering community-academic partnerships to increase the use of research evidence in policy and practice. Dr Aarons has been a featured speaker on implementation science in the US, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and Africa. He also provides training and mentoring in implementation science and practice for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NIH Fogarty International Center and Kings College London.

Annette

Boaz

Annette Boaz is professor of Health and Social Care Policy at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She has more than 25 years of experience in supporting the use of evidence across a range of policy domains. She was part of one of the largest UK investments in the evidence use landscape, the ESRC Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice and has undertaken an international leadership role in promoting the use of evidence. She is a founding editor of the international journal Evidence & Policy and has recently published a book on evidence use: ‘What Works Now.’ With Kathryn Oliver, she leads Transforming Evidence, an international initiative designed to support the use of research evidence in different policy fields and contexts. She has a particular research interest in stakeholder involvement, the role of partnerships in promoting research use, implementation science and service improvement. She has worked in the UK Department of Health and also the Government Office for Science. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the WHO European Advisory Committee on Health Research.

Geoffrey M.

Curran

Geoff Curran is a professor of Pharmacy Practice and Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). His broad research area has been health services research, with focus areas in 1) diffusion of innovation in a variety of health care settings (e.g., pharmacy, specialty care, primary care, and community settings); and 2) predictors of treatment engagement and outcomes for mental health and substance use disorders. Dr Curran is a medical sociologist. For the past 20 years he has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health (US), the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and other funders to develop and test a range of implementation strategies designed to support the uptake and sustainment of evidence-based practices. Dr Curran also has written widely on research design and methodology in implementation science. He is the Director of the Center for Implementation Research, which is supported by the Translational Research Institute (TRI, UL1 TR003107), through the US National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the US National Institutes of Health (US NIH). The Center is devoted to developing and testing implementation strategies across a wide range of service contexts, assisting with the implementation of practices within community practices, and training the next generation of implementation scientists.

Kim

Goldsmith

Kimberley Goldsmith is a reader in medical statistics in the Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics. She has extensive experience in the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials, particularly in complex interventions in mental health. She is interested in longitudinal modelling, mediation/mechanism of treatment analysis and the use of structural equation models to address questions in these areas.  She has collaborated on important trials of complex interventions for chronic fatigue syndrome, depression and irritable bowel syndrome to name a few.  Her work on these trials has led to key mediation/mechanism publications that are impacting on refinement of cognitive behavioural therapies, and on important papers on methods, such as this tutorial on longitudinal structural equation models for mediation.

Sobia

Khan

Sobia Khan, Director of Implementation at The Center for Implementation is a global expert on how to practically implement complex interventions in complex systems. Throughout her career, she has trained 1000+ professionals across 5 continents on the science and practice of implementation with a special orientation to systems thinking.
Recent highlights of Ms. Khan’s work include supporting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their opioid response by embedding implementation science and systems thinking into their tools, and being an implementation science collaborator with the WHO to support healthcare organisations by building a toolkit on infection prevention and control best practices for Covid-19.

Brian S.

Mittman

Brian S. Mittman, PhD is a senior scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation with additional affiliations at the University of Southern California (USC) and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he co-leads the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Implementation and Improvement Science Initiative. He previously served as a visiting professor in the UCLA School of Public Health and Anderson Graduate School of Management.

Dr Mittman convened the planning committee that launched the journal Implementation Science and served as co-editor in chief from 2005-2012. He was a founding member of the US Institute of Medicine Forum on the Science of Quality Improvement and Implementation and chaired the National Institutes of Health (NIH) peer review panel on Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health in 2007 and 2010. He directed VA’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) from 2002-2004. He currently serves on the Methodology Committee for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where he leads the Methodology Committee initiative to develop and disseminate methods standards for studying complex health interventions. He is a member of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NIH) Board of External Experts, the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Advisory Panel on Research, and advisory boards for several additional U.S. and international research programs in implementation science. He is a past member of the Academy Health Methods Council and Education Council. He has led or supported numerous implementation and improvement science studies and has taught implementation science throughout the US and abroad.

Julia

Moore

Dr Julia E. Moore, Executive Director of The Center for Implementation is internationally known for her ability to communicate complex implementation science concepts in clear and actionable ways. Dr Moore has led and designed tailored courses and workshops for over 4000 professionals. She also developed the popular online mini-course, Inspiring Change: Creating Impact with Evidence-based Implementation, which has been completed by over 5000 professionals from around the globe.

Noushig

Nahabedian

Noushig is the Head of Quality Improvement & SLaM Partners at South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. The service provides a matrix of quality improvement expertise and coaching and consultancy services that aims to bring out the best in people to build robust and resilient ways of working to ensure the provision of the right care, right time, and right place. Noushig has a background in psychology and has worked in the service since 2012. She has a passion for equipping service users and carers with skills to make meaningful changes and progress their own personal recovery journey

Per

Nilsen

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 programme on implementation science at Linköping University. He leads several projects on implementation of changes in health and welfare, including alcohol prevention. 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.

Jane

Sandall

CBE

Jane Sandall is professor of social science and women’s health at King’s College London. She is a an NIHR Senior Investigator, with a clinical background in nursing, health visiting and midwifery and an academic background in social science. Jane leads the maternal health policy, systems and implementation research group in the Department of Women and Children’s Health, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London. She also leads the maternity and perinatal women’s health theme in NIHR ARC South London and contributes as academic faculty in the Centre for Implementation Science. Her research draws on the clinical and social sciences and focuses on issues of quality and safety. Key themes are: i) the impact of maternal health policy at a health system and service-delivery level, and on health outcomes and users’ experiences, and ii) the social and organisational implications of the translation of innovative health technologies into health care to improve safety. Her research has been funded by the ESRC, MRC, Wellcome, NIHR, Gates, and a range of charitable sources. For example: the organisation and outcome of birth in different settings, efficient use of the maternity workforce and the implications for safety & quality in maternity care, implementation of rapid response systems in the management of escalation of care in acute medical and maternity settings.

Her contribution to implementation research involves trials of complex interventions. For example, conducting implementation evaluations in behavioural interventions in pregnant women who are obese, CRADLE, a stepped wedge trial of an automated device used by frontline health workers to detect shock and hypertension in low income countries, step wedge trial of implementation of a programme to detect fetal growth restriction. Leading a pilot effectiveness-implementation trial looking at feasibility and mechanisms of midwife continuity of care pathway for women at higher risk of pre-term birth, and the implementation of telemedicine in Intensive Care. Jane and her team’s research findings have informed the UK government commission on Nursing and Midwifery, House of Commons Health Committee on Inequalities, English, Scottish, US, Brazilian, Irish and Australian reviews of maternity services and WHO. She currently sits on the UK NICE implementation strategy group.