RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Despite a sustained focus by policymakers and researchers on improving the standard of clinical care in public mental health services, the use of evidence-based practice remains low. Among other challenges, this reflects the difficulty of translating clinical research into useable policy that can be feasibly funded and monitored by state or large healthcare systems. CASE PRESENTATION: In this paper we present a case study of Washington State's strategy for monitoring the use of clinical elements at the session level for all Medicaid-funded children's mental health services. The implementation of this strategy reflects policy actions to promote effective practice while also actively influencing multiple other levels of the implementation ecology. The approach is informed by the Policy Ecology Framework, the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, the evidence-based policymaking literature, and common ontology and clinical elements models. CONCLUSIONS: We found the strategy developed in Washington State to be a feasible method of collecting session level information about the use of effective clinical mental health practices. In addition, the approach appears to be having influence on multiple layers of the implementation ecology that could be explored through further study.
RESUMO
The long term effects of untreated mental health need for individuals, families and society has prompted a number of federal policy statements encouraging the use of evidence-based programs (EBP) in children's healthcare. However, among other challenges of evidence-based practice implementation, states often do not know where to make investments based on population need. In this paper we present the use of a Geographic Information System approach to undertake a mental health needs assessment for Washington State. Our study found that this technology can be beneficially applied to conducting needs assessment for EBP implementation, and we provide recommendations for future applications.