Meet the Experts

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.

Erika is a Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California San Diego. Erika investigates implementation processes and strategies aimed at improving the use of evidence in policymaking, and testing strategies to promote access to evidence-based substance use treatment services for safety-net and justice-involved populations.

Erika’s research broadly focuses on health policy, behavioral health (comorbid substance use and mental illness), and health equity for publicly insured, uninsured and underinsured populations. She employs mixed methods and is passionate about advancing dissemination and implementation science approaches in health services research.

Erika’s research has been published in Implementation Science, Health Affairs, AIDS and Behavior, Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, amongst others.

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.

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.

Venetia joined Welbodi Partnership in October 2019, and in that time has stepped in as the Country Director, and now leads on strategy and manages all Welbodi grants and partnerships with external organisations and oversees programmes. Venetia has worked as a physician in Obstetrics and Gynaecology since 2012, with a special interest in early pregnancy and ultrasound, contributing to research and publications, with a particular focus on Caesarean scar ectopic pregnancy. She managed the University College London NIHR funded research study of Early Pregnancy Units in the UK (the VESPA Study) before completing a Masters in Public Health.

Venetia has a Masters of Science in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) and a Bachelor of Science, both from University College London.

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.

Dr. Cara C. Lewis is a clinical psychologist, senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and affiliate faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine and the Department of Health Systems and Population Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. She is Past President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration and co-founding Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Research and Practice, a journal published in partnership with SIRC and Sage. Her research focuses on advancing pragmatic and rigorous measures and methods for implementation science and practice, and informing tailored implementation of evidence based practices across diverse settings, populations, and problem areas. She is also Co-Director of the Social Needs Network for Evaluation and Translation (SONNET), which is a national Coordinating Center for bringing research, evaluation, and implementation support to bear across Kaiser Permanente in the service of addressing social risk among its members.

Allison Metz, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist with expertise in child development and family systems and a commitment to improving child and family outcomes and advancing equity. Allison specializes in the implementation of evidence to achieve social impact for children and families in a range of human service and education areas, with an emphasis on child welfare and early childhood service contexts. Allison is Professor of the Practice and Director of Implementation Practice at the School of Social Work, Faculty Fellow at the FPG Child Development Institute, and Adjunct Professor at the School of Global Public Health at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. Allison previously served as Director of the National Implementation Research Network and Lead of the Implementation Science Division at the FPG Child Development Institute where she also served as a Senior Research Scientist for 13 years. Allison’s research interests include the role of trust, power and relationships in evidence use, competencies for supporting implementation, and co-creation strategies to support sustainable change. She is particularly interested in the development of a workforce for supporting implementation in public systems. Allison is co-chair of the Institute on Implementation Practice and founding director of the Collaborative for Implementation Practice at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work. She is the co-editor of the widely read volume Applying Implementation Science in Early Childhood Programs and Systems.

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.

Jamie Murdoch is a Senior Lecturer in Social Science and Health in the Department of Population Health Sciences at King’s College London. His research focuses on strengthening health care systems to provide high-quality care in low resourced settings across the life course; conducting process evaluations of complex interventions implemented in health and social care settings; and developing social science methods to investigate health interventions within complex social systems.

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 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.

Byron Powell is an Associate Professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. He is Co-Director of the Brown School’s Center for Mental Health Services Research and Associate Director of the Institute for Public Health’s Center for Dissemination & Implementation, for which he leads the Methods & Metascience Unit. He aims to improve the quality of behavioral health services by designing, tailoring, and assessing the effectiveness of implementation strategies and advancing implementation research methods. Byron is President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration. He is the Associate Director designee for the Implementation Research Institute and core faculty for the HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Implementation Research Institute (HIGH IRI); Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation in Health (TIDIRH) -Australia; and the Irish Implementation Science Training Institute. Byron also serves on the editorial boards for Implementation Science and Implementation Research and Practice.

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.

Dr Kristin Thomas is an associate professor at the Department of Medical and Health Sciences at Linköping University, Sweden. She has a PhD in Medical Sciences, with a focus on implementation science. Her research includes the implementation of complex interventions in healthcare, implementation of preventative care in primary care and the development of health behaviour interventions. Dr Thomas is also active in teaching and supervision of implementation science students at master and doctoral levels at Linköping University.

Dr Julie Williams is a post-doctoral researcher in the Centre for Implementation Science, King’s College London and an Occupational Therapist. Her research interests are implementation in mental health services, the physical health of people with serious mental illness, and how service users and clinical staff are involved in research. She currently works on the Integrating our Mental and Physical Health Care Systems Project, which is working on improving the physical health of people using mental health services.