Brittany E. Blanchard

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor at University of Washington

Safer use strategies (SUS) are behaviors before, during, and after drug use to moderate use and/or mitigate unwanted consequences. As treatment of substance use disorders becomes more common in primary care, offering SUS in primary care merits exploration. We explored acceptability and use of SUS in primary care using a convergent parallel mixed-me...

Evidence describing the association between sleep quality and trauma‐focused therapy is mixed. This secondary analysis of a primary care sample examined whether (a) baseline sleep quality moderated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity over time across groups receiving different doses of cognitive processing therapy (CPT) and (b) sl...

Rural primary care (RPC) clinics may face unique barriers to implementing the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM). We used mixed methods to explore RPC staff and practice facilitator (PF) perspectives on CoCM implementation. PFs reported on barriers and facilitators experienced after each monthly meeting with clinics (n = 459 surveys across 23 clinics)...

Background Although substantial progress has been made in establishing evidence-based psychosocial clinical interventions and implementation strategies for mental health, translating research into practice—particularly in more accessible, community settings—has been slow. Objective This protocol outlines the renewal of the National Institute of Me...

Opioid use disorder (OUD) care engagement rates in primary care (PC) settings are often low. Little is known about PC team experiences when delivering OUD treatment and potential factors that influence their capacity to engage patients in treatment. Exploring PC team experiences may inform needed supports that can optimize OUD care delivery and imp...

Over 80% of adults in the general population experience trauma. Rates of patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are high in primary care settings and are likely to be even higher in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). Trauma exposure has been linked to psychiatric symptoms and physical health comorbidities, though little researc...

Objectives Buprenorphine, a medication for opioid use disorder (OUD), is underutilized in general medical settings. Further, it is inequitably received by racialized groups and persons with comorbidities. The Veterans Health Administration launched an initiative to increase buprenorphine receipt in primary care. The project's objective was to ident...

BACKGROUND Digital Mental Health (DMH) tools are an effective, readily accessible, and affordable form of mental health support. However, sustained engagement with DMH is suboptimal, with limited research on DMH engagement. The Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) is an empirically supported theory of health behavior adoption and maintenance. Whet...

Background Digital Mental Health (DMH) tools are an effective, readily accessible, and affordable form of mental health support. However, sustained engagement with DMH is suboptimal, with limited research on DMH engagement. The Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) is an empirically supported theory of health behavior adoption and maintenance. Whet...

The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5) is a measure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity that is widely used for clinical and research purposes. Although previous work has examined metrics of minimal important difference (MID) of the PCL-5 in veteran samples, no work has identified PCL-5 MID metrics among adults in primary care in...

Introduction: The Brief Addiction Monitor-Revised (BAM-R) is a widely used, 17-item assessment of substance use, risk, and protective factors associated with recovery from substance use disorders. Despite wide adoption in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and recommendations for use in measurement-based care (MBC), administration may no...

Objective: To compare 12-month treatment outcomes for primary care patients with bipolar disorder randomized to treatment with collaborative care or co-located specialty care. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of 191 patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder treated for 12-months during a comparative effectiveness trial in 12 Federally Q...

Objective To describe bipolar disorder medication treatment of individuals in a primary care-based pragmatic clinical trial. Methods Participants were randomized to 12-months of treatment with direct care by co-located psychiatrists in primary care, or collaborative care (primary care clinicians supported by psychiatrists). Medication data at init...

The present study is a secondary analysis that tested whether difficulties with emotion regulation (DER) would statistically mediate cultural risk factors of suicide and depression symptoms or suicidal behaviors among (a) Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and (b) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals. BIPOC...

This special section is dedicated to some of the recent work by Dr. Angela Stevens, who passed away unexpectedly last year. She is dearly missed by those fortunate enough to have known her, but her legacy lives on through the lives she touched and her research. Since the beginning of her undergraduate training, Dr. Angela Stevens has dedicated her...

This study developed and psychometrically evaluated a brief measure of mental health treatment knowledge (N = 726). Scores from Knowledge about Treatment (KaT) demonstrated a unidimensional measure with good model fit, internal consistency reliability, convergent and predictive validity, test-retest reliability, and measurement invariance across ge...

Purpose To develop and psychometrically evaluate a brief measure of the telemental health experience among people receiving psychiatric and psychological care—the Telepsych User Experience Scale (TUES). Methods The TUES was administered at 6 months to 364 study participants who screened positive for posttraumatic stress disorder and/or bipolar dis...

Importance With increasing rates of opioid use disorder (OUD) and overdose deaths in the US, increased access to medications for OUD (MOUD) is paramount. Rigorous effectiveness evaluations of large-scale implementation initiatives using quasi-experimental designs are needed to inform expansion efforts. Objective To evaluate a US Department of Vete...

Background Improving access to medication treatment of opioid use disorder (MOUD) is a national priority, yet common modifiable barriers (e.g., limited provider knowledge, negative beliefs about MOUD) often challenge implementation of MOUD delivery. To address these barriers, the VA launched a multifaceted implementation intervention focused on pla...

Background The reasons for college students to abstain from alcohol and cannabis use on a given day can inform efforts to prevent or intervene in those behaviors. Research on reasons for alcohol nonuse remains in its nascent stages and no study to date has examined reasons for cannabis nonuse on a given day. Here we examine reasons for nonuse among...

Alcohol use is prevalent among college students, and some are at risk for developing alcohol use disorders. However, many students report using alcohol without experiencing negative consequences, which may be due, in part, to use of protective behavioral strategies (PBS). Although evidence of PBS effectiveness on reducing alcohol use and negative c...

Chronic alcohol consumption is associated with numerous adverse health consequences and is the third leading cause of global disease burden. This entry provides an overview of long‐term negative consequences of problematic alcohol use, as well as potential health benefits of light‐to‐moderate use of alcohol. Psychosocial and pharmacological treatme...

Problematic alcohol use is prevalent in the United States (US) and elsewhere. Given the diffuse effects of alcohol use on health behaviors, understanding the assessment of problematic alcohol use, etiological models of disordered use, and common treatments for alcohol use disorder is imperative for healthcare providers and other relevant stakeholde...

The Substance Use Risk Profile Scale (SURPS), a widely used self-report questionnaire, assesses four personality traits which predict risk for substance use (i.e., anxiety sensitivity, hopelessness, impulsivity, and sensation seeking). Given its use in research and clinical settings, as well as potential utility, this study aimed to provide a compr...

We reexamined the psychometric properties of the Momentary Impulsivity Scale (MIS) in two young adult samples using daily diary (N = 77) and ecological momentary assessment (N = 147). A one-factor between- and within-person structure was supported, though “I felt impatient” loaded poorly within-person. MIS scores consistently related to emotion-dri...

Although research suggests links between emotion regulation strategies and substance use outcomes, little work has examined the relationship between specific strategies (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) and outcomes (i.e., alcohol and cannabis consumption and related problems). To date, no research has examined the association between emotion reg...

Background: Relations between impulsigenic traits and alcohol-related outcomes have been the focus of much research, yet precise relations remain elusive. Historically, research used broadband conceptualizations of impulsivity, which yielded inconclusive findings. Attempts to ameliorate this problem led to more work on narrowband assessments of imp...

Purpose: Although previous studies have elucidated associations between motivations for drinking and sex as they relate to risky health outcomes among female college students, the utility of cross-domain motives (i.e., alcohol motives predicting sex-related outcomes and vice versa) in the prediction of specific alcohol- and sex-related behaviors h...

Given inconsistent findings regarding relations between specific types of alcohol-related protective behavioral strategy use and alcohol outcomes, the current study aimed to examine whether specific strategies vary regarding relations with alcohol consumption. Undergraduate college students (N = 162) completed measures online, including the Protect...

Hispanic students are increasingly represented on U.S. college campuses. With the exception of White, non-Hispanic students, Hispanic students’ rates of heavy drinking are higher compared to other racial/ethnic minority groups. Acculturative stress (AS), or stress stemming from the acculturation process, is considered a correlate of alcohol and sub...

The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) PhenX Toolkit has recognized the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale as a recommended measure of impulsive dispositions, as this framework for impulsivity-like traits has demonstrated strong psychometric properties across a variety of samples and exhibited measurement and structural invariance across males and...

Background: The association between impulsive dispositions and the use of the central nervous system (CNS) depressant alcohol has been examined extensively; however, the links between other depressant use (sedatives, tranquilizers, and pain relievers) and impulsivity have been less studied, and findings have been equivocal. This may be due, in par...

Acculturative stress (AS), or stress from the process of acculturating into a new culture (e.g., Hispanic immigrating to the U.S.), has been shown to correlate with maladaptive outcomes (including psychological distress and substance use). Hispanic young adults account for 16.5% of U.S. youths who report misuse of alcohol or illicit drugs, and alco...