6th UK Implementation Science Research Conference

Meet the Experts

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.

Erika

Crable

Dr. Erika Crable is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. Her research tests the effectiveness of dissemination strategies to enhance the use of science in policymaking, and examines the use of implementation strategies to promote access to evidence-based substance use treatment for publicly insured and criminal-legal-involved populations. She is PI of a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study testing dissemination strategies to improve access to medications for opioid use disorder in Medicaid benefit arrays. She is also a Fellow with the National Institute of Health-funded Implementation Research Institute, and previously worked as a policy consultant to several U.S. federal health services agencies.  

Geoffrey M.

Curran

Dr. Curran’s 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.  He is a Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).  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. 

Allison

Metz

Professor of the Practice Director of Implementation Practice

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.

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 U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute 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.  He is a past member of the Methodology Committee for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where he led the Methodology Committee initiative to develop and disseminate methods standards for studying complex health interventions, and a past member of the AcademyHealth 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.    

  

John

Øvretveit

Professor of health care improvement implementation and evaluation at the Medical Management Centre, The Karolinska Institute, and R&D officer for Stockholm Healthcare.

Professor John Øvretveit works as R&D officer for Stockholm healthcare system and as professor of improvement, implementation and evaluation at the Karolinska Institute medical university Stockholm. Previously he learned the value of thermal underwear at Nordic School of Public Health where he worked for 15 years when establishing and running the quality improvement program at Bergen Medical school, where you can buy the best rain wear at the North Atlantic fisherman stores. He served a frightening 12 years as a board director of the USA joint commission international where he saw the best and worst of healthcare, and serves as a board director of the global implementation society leading their Covid 19 implementation response group. Over his career, he has published over 400 scientific peer-reviewed articles and 12 books.

Byron

Powell

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 Initiative. He aims to improve the quality of health and social services by designing, tailoring, and assessing the effectiveness of implementation strategies and advancing implementation research methods. His research has been funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Fahs-Beck Fund for Research, and Experimentation, and the William T. Grant Foundation. In 2022, he received a Fulbright Specialist Award to Ireland at the University College Cork. Byron is Past-President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Implementation Research and Practice, and he serves on the editorial board of Implementation Science. Byron is active in capacity-building initiatives internationally. He serves as the Associate Director designee for the Implementation Research Institute and core faculty for the HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Implementation Research Institute; Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation in Health-Australia; Irish Implementation Science Training Institute; and the UK Implementation Science Masterclass. 

Jane

Sandall

CBE

Jane Sandall is a Professor of Women’s Social Science and Women’s Health at King’s College London and seconded to NHS England to lead maternity and midwifery research. . She is an NIHR Senior Investigator Emerita and has a clinical background in nursing, health visiting and midwifery and an academic background in social sciences. Her research has investigated implementation of open disclosure in perinatal care, how midwife continuity of care may improve quality of care for women at higher risk of pre-term birth and innovations in how services are delivered to improve safety, quality, and women’s experience. 

She is leading the implementation evaluation research theme in the Tommys National Centre for Maternity Improvement developing a clinical decision tool to reduce improve preterm birth and stillbirth. She is leading the maternity and Perinatal mental Health theme in NIHR ARC South London and leads research on reducing inequalities in care and outcomes for women and babies. She is a member of NIHR CRIBBS Global Health Group to prevent maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity in Sierra Leone. 

She is a member of WHO STAGE Strategic and Technical Advisory Group of Experts (STAGE) on Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health and Nutrition and contributes to a range of NIHR and MRC research boards. 

Her research findings have informed English, Scottish, US, Brazilian, Irish and Australian reviews of maternity services and WHO.