Collaborative Organizational Approach to Selecting and Tailoring Implementation Strategies

Overview

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.