Hendricks Brown

• PhD
• Northwestern University

Background Rollout designs, which include stepped wedge designs, are defined by staggered implementation of new or alternative programs or services. Critiques of stepped wedge and other rollout designs have raised concerns regarding the confounding of true implementation or program effects with unrelated, global changes in service delivery, with so...

Background Implementation strategies can help support the adoption and implementation of health interventions that are appropriate for a local context and acceptable to decision makers and community members. Implementation strategies should be designed to handle the complexity of the multi-level, dynamic contexts in which interventions are implemen...

Youth internalizing symptoms (i.e., depression and anxiety), suicide ideation and attempts have been rising in recent years, including among Hispanics. Disparities in mental healthcare are concerning and require intervention, ideally prevention or early intervention. Familias Unidas is a culturally-syntonic, family-centered intervention effective i...

Introduction Long-acting injectable (LAI) antipsychotic medications and clozapine are effective yet underutilized medical therapies in early intervention services. The purpose of this study was to conduct a pre-implementation evaluation of contextual determinants of early intervention programs to implement innovations optimizing LAI antipsychotic a...

Background The Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) is an evidence-based mental health treatment in primary care. A greater understanding of the determinants of successful CoCM implementation, particularly the characteristics of multi-level implementers, is needed. Methods This study was a process evaluation of the Collaborative Behavioral Health Progr...

Prevention science has increasingly turned to integrative data analysis (IDA) to combine individual participant-level data from multiple studies of the same topic, allowing us to evaluate overall effect size, test and model heterogeneity, and examine mediation. Studies included in IDA often use different measures for the same construct, leading to...

Community violence and crime are significant public health problems with serious and lasting effects on young people, families, and communities. This violence and crime have significant ripple effects, affecting not just those who are directly physically injured, but also those who witness violent episodes, those who have friends or loved ones kill...

Introduction Globally, overdose deaths increased near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created availability and access barriers to addiction and social services. Especially in times of a crisis like a pandemic, local exposures, service availability and access, and system responses have major influence on people who use drugs. For polic...

Background: Social-emotional risk for subsequent behavioral health problems can be identified at toddler age, a period where prevention has a heightened impact. This study aimed to meaningfully engage pediatric clinicians, given the emphasis on health promotion and broad reach of primary care, to prepare an Implementation Research Logic Model to g...

Fifteen to 20 years is how long it takes for the billions of dollars of health-related research to translate into evidence-based policies and programs suitable for public use. Over the past two decades, an exciting science has emerged that seeks to narrow the gap between the discovery of new knowledge and its application in public health, mental he...

Background Adolescence is a vulnerable developmental period, characterized by high rates of mental health concerns, yet few adolescents receive treatment. Public libraries support adolescents by providing them with access to teen programming, technological resources, and have recently been providing mental health services. Digital mental health (DM...

Monitoring pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) metrics can guide service delivery yet does not occur routinely. We developed a survey to understand current practices for monitoring PrEP at PrEP-providing organizations in Illinois and Missouri. The survey was distributed from September through November 2020; 26 organizations participated. Most responden...

This article focuses on the rationale, design and methods of an effectiveness-implementation hybrid type I randomized trial of eHealth Familias Unidas Mental Health, a family-based, online delivered intervention for Hispanic families to prevent/reduce depressive and anxious symptoms, suicide ideation/behaviors, and drug use in Hispanic youth. Utili...

Major research breakthroughs over the past 30 years in the field of substance use prevention have served to: (1) enhance understanding of pharmacological effects on the central and peripheral nervous systems and the health and social consequences of use of psychoactive substances, particularly for children and adolescents; (2) delineate the process...

Objective: To evaluate changes in clinicians' use of evidence-based practice, openness toward evidence-based practice, and their acceptance of organizational changes after a rehabilitation hospital transitioned to a new facility designed to accelerate clinician-researcher collaborations. Design: Three repeated surveys of clinicians before, 7-9 m...

Background Mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to improve psychological outcomes including stress, anxiety, and depression in general population studies. However, effectiveness has not been sufficiently examined in racially and ethnically diverse community-based settings. We will evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of a mindfu...

Background: Despite evidence that eHealth approaches can be effective in reducing HIV risk, their implementation requirements for public health scale up are not well established and effective strategies to bring these programs into practice are still unknown. Keep It Up! (KIU!) is an online program proven to reduce HIV risk among young men who hav...

Background Mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to improve psychological outcomes including stress, anxiety and depression in general population studies. However, effectiveness has not been sufficiently examined in racially and ethnically diverse community based settings. We will evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of a mindful...

Our objective is to improve local decision-making for strategies to end the HIV epidemic using the newly developed Levers of HIV agent-based model (ABM). Agent-based models use computer simulations that incorporate heterogeneity in individual behaviors and interactions, allow emergence of systemic behaviors, and extrapolate into the future. The Lev...

The historic momentum from national conversations on the roots and current impacts of racism in the USA presents an incredible window of opportunity for prevention scientists to revisit how common theories, measurement tools, methodologies, and interventions can be radically re-envisioned, retooled, and rebuilt to dismantle racism and promote equit...

Background: Effective and efficient implementation of the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) for depression and anxiety is imperative for program success. Studies examining barriers to implementation often omit patient perspectives. Objectives: To explore experiences and attitudes of eligible patients referred to CoCM who declined participation or...

To examine long-term effects of early intervention services (EIS) for first-episode psychosis, we compared Heinrichs-Carpenter Quality of Life (QLS) and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) scores and inpatient hospitalization days over 5 years with data from the site-randomized RAISE-ETP trial that compared the EIS NAVIGATE (17 sites; 223...

Background: Latino men who have sex with men (LMSM) experience HIV and behavioral health disparities. Yet, evidence-based interventions, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and behavioral health treatments, have not been equitably scaled up to meet LMSM needs. To address quality of life and the public health importance of HIV prevention, imple...

Translation of developmental science discoveries is impeded by numerous barriers at different stages of the research-to-practice pipeline. Actualization of the vast potential of the developmental sciences to improve children's health and development in the real world is imperative but has not yet been fully realized. In this commentary, we argue th...

Background Adaptation is an accepted part of implementing evidence-based practices. COVID-19 presented a unique opportunity to examine adaptation in evolving contexts. Delivering service to people with opioid use disorder during the pandemic required significant adaptation due to revised regulations and limited service access. This report evaluated...

Background This study evaluates the Leadership and Organizational Change for Implementation (LOCI) strategy and its effect on implementation leadership, transformational leadership, and implementation climate. Methods A stepped wedge cluster randomized study design enrolling 47 first-level leaders from child- and adult-specialized mental health cl...

U.S. military suicides are increasing and disrupted relationships frequently precede them. Group-level interventions are needed that reduce future suicide vulnerability among healthy members and also ameliorate risk among those already suicidal. We examined whether our Wingman-Connect Program (W-CP) strengthened Air Force relationship networks and...

Preventing adverse health outcomes is complex due to the multi-level contexts and social systems in which these phenomena occur. To capture both the systemic effects, local determinants, and individual-level risks and protective factors simultaneously, the prevention field has called for adoption of system science methods in general and agent-based...

Background: Decision makers face challenges in estimating local risk for child maltreatment and how best to prioritize which factors to intervene upon. Methods: Using US Census and survey data for all US counties (N = 3141), we derived US county profiles characterized by the severity of child maltreatment risk factors observed at the county leve...

Background The Collaborative Care Model (CoCM) is a well-established treatment for depression in primary care settings. The critical drivers and specific strategies for improving implementation and sustainment are largely unknown. Rigorous pragmatic research is needed to understand CoCM implementation processes and outcomes. Methods This study is...

Background: This study evaluates the Leadership and Organizational Change for Implementation (LOCI) strategy and its effect on implementation leadership, transformational leadership, and implementation climate. Methods: A stepped wedge cluster randomized trial enrolled 47 first-level leaders from child- and adult-specialized mental health clinics w...

Objective: For implementation of an evidence-based program to be effective, efficient, and equitable across diverse populations, we propose that researchers adopt a systems approach that is often absent in efficacy studies. To this end, we describe how a computer-based monitoring system can support the delivery of the New Beginnings Program (NBP),...

Between January 2016 and June 2020, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration rapidly distributed $7.5 billion in response to the U.S. opioid crisis. These funds are designed to increase access to medications for addiction treatment, reduce unmet treatment need, reduce overdose death rates, and provide and sustain effective prev...

Background Young men who have sex with men are disproportionately impacted by the HIV epidemic in the United States. Few rigorously tested HIV prevention interventions have been developed for young men who have sex with men; previous interventions have primarily focused on in-person programming, with high variability in fidelity. With nearly all yo...

Background The US 21st Century Cures Act provided $7.5 billion in grant funding to states and territories for evidence-based responses to the opioid epidemic. Currently, little is known about optimal strategies for sustaining these programs beyond this start-up funding. Methods Using an inductive, conventional content analysis, we conducted key in...

Decision-makers need to consider a range of factors when selecting evidence-based programs (EBPs) for implementation, which can be especially challenging when addressing complex issues such as child maltreatment prevention. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) frameworks and tools are useful for evaluating such complex decisions. We describe the...

U.S. health care systems are tasked with alleviating the burden of mental health, but are frequently underprepared and lack workforce and resource capacity to deliver services to all in need. Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) can increase access to evidence-based mental health care. However, DMHIs commonly do not fit into the day-to-day a...

Importance Suicide has been a leading manner of death for US Air Force personnel in recent years. Universal prevention programs that reduce suicidal thoughts and behaviors in military populations have not been identified. Objectives To determine whether the Wingman-Connect program for Airmen-in-training reduces suicidal ideation, depression, and o...

Background: A cascade of care (CoC) model may improve understanding of gaps in addiction treatment availability and quality over current single measure methods. Despite increased funding, opioid overdose rates remain high. Therefore, it is critical to understand where the health-care system is failing to provide appropriate care for people with opi...

Background: Enhancing the sustainability of evidence-based prevention programs for mental and behavioral health requires tools for measuring both sustainability determinants and sustainment outcomes. The aim of this study was to develop the Sustainment Measurement System Scale (SMSS) and to assess its reliability and construct validity for measuri...

Little is known about how to best implement eHealth HIV interventions for adolescent men who have sex with men (AMSM) in real-world settings. In response, our current study describes formative implementation research with community-based organizations (CBOs) in preparation for future implementation of the SMART Program, a stepped-care package of th...

Background: The US 21st Century Cures Act provided $7.5 billion in grant funding to states and territories for evidence-based responses to the opioid epidemic. Currently, little is known about optimal strategies for sustaining these programs beyond this start-up funding. Methods: Using an inductive, conventional content analysis, we conducted key i...

Background: The US 21st Century Cures Act provided $7.5 billion in grant funding to states and territories for evidence-based responses to the opioid epidemic. Currently, little is known about optimal strategies for sustaining these programs beyond this start-up funding. Methods: Using an inductive, conventional content analysis, we conducted key i...

Objective To determine which county-level social, economic, demographic, epidemiologic and access to care factors are associated with Latino/non-Latino White disparities in prevalence of diagnosed HIV infection. Methods and findings We used 2016 county-level prevalence rates of diagnosed HIV infection rates for Latinos and non-Latino Whites obtain...

Background: Though clinical practice guidelines are available, the diagnosis of pediatric hypertension (HTN) is often missed. Management may not follow guidelines due to the measurement challenges in children, complexity of interpreting youth blood pressure standards that are dependent on height, age, and sex, familiarity with diagnostic criteria,...

Context: More than 4 decades of research indicate that parenting interventions are effective at preventing and treating mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in children and adolescents. Pediatric primary care is a viable setting for delivery of these interventions. Objective: Previous meta-analyses have shown that behavioral interventions...

In 2019, the requisite biomedical and behavioral interventions to eliminate new HIV infections exist. “Ending the HIV Epidemic” now becomes primarily a challenge of will and implementation. This review maps the extent to which implementation research (IR) has been integrated into HIV research by reviewing the recent funding portfolio of the NIH. We...

Background A large knowledge gap exists regarding the measurement of sustainability of evidence-based prevention programs for mental and behavioral health. This paper describes an instrument that is a component of the Sustainment Measurement System (SMS), designed to assess both determinants and outcomes of efforts to sustain prevention programs an...

Background: Enhancing the sustainability of evidence-based prevention programs for mental and behavioral health requires tools for measuring both sustainability determinants and sustainment outcomes. The aim of this study was to develop the Sustainment Measurement System Scale (SMSS) and to assess its reliability and construct validity for measurin...

Background: Although some advances have been made in recent years, the lack of measures remains a major challenge in the field of implementation research. This results in frequent adaptation of implementation measures for different contexts-including different types of respondents or professional roles-than those for which they were originally dev...

A large knowledge gap exists regarding the measurement of sustainability of evidence-based prevention programs for mental and behavioral health. We interviewed 45 representatives of 10 grantees and 9 program officers within 4 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration prevention grant initiatives to identify experiences with implemen...

BACKGROUND Although adolescent depression carries a high burden of disease worldwide, few scalable depression interventions target adolescents in primary care. OBJECTIVE This study compares CATCH-IT (Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive Behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training), an internet-based intervention, to a general health...

Background Adolescent depression carries a high burden of disease worldwide, but access to care for this population is limited. Prevention is one solution to curtail the negative consequences of adolescent depression. Internet interventions to prevent adolescent depression can overcome barriers to access, but few studies examine long-term outcomes....

Purpose of review Despite tremendous potential for public health impact and continued investments in development and evaluation, it is rare for eHealth behavioral interventions to be implemented broadly in practice. Intervention developers may not be planning for implementation when designing technology-enabled interventions, thus creating greater...

Objective: The authors sought to develop and validate a suite of dimensional measures of psychiatric syndromes for use in a criminal justice population. Methods: The previously validated Computerized Adaptive Test-Mental Health (CAT-MH) was administered to a sample of 475 defendants in the Cook County Bond Court. Item-level data were used to det...

Construct equivalence of measures across studies is necessary for synthesizing results when combining data in meta-analysis or integrative data analysis. We discuss several assumptions required for construct equivalence, and review methods using individual-level data and item response theory (IRT) analysis for detecting or adjusting for violations...

Background: Alignment across levels of leadership within an organization is needed for successful implementation of evidence-based practice. The leadership and organizational change for implementation (LOCI) intervention is a multi-faceted multilevel implementation strategy focusing on enhancing first-level general and implementation leadership wh...

Implementation science has great potential to improve the health of communities and individuals who are not achieving health equity. However, implementation science can exacerbate health disparities if its use is biased toward entities that already have the highest capacities for delivering evidence-based interventions. In this article, we ex­amine...

The field of prevention has established the potential to promote child adjustment across a wide array of outcomes. However, when evidence-based prevention programs have been delivered at scale in community settings, declines in implementation and outcomes have resulted. Maintaining high quality implementation is a critical challenge for the field....

Importance Although 13% to 20% of American adolescents experience a depressive episode annually, no scalable primary care model for adolescent depression prevention is currently available. Objective To study whether competent adulthood transition with cognitive behavioral humanistic and interpersonal training (CATCH-IT) lowers the hazard for depre...

eTable 1. Definition for Criteria for Main Outcomes Analyses eTable 2. MI Fidelity: Mean MITI Summary Scores eTable 3. Hazard Ratio Estimate and 95% CI for First Depressive Episode Comparing CATCH-IT to Health Education eTable 4. Incidence of First Depressive Episode by Treatment Group eTable 5. Adjusted Cox Proportional Hazard Model Results, Inclu...

Family-based behavioral interventions are efficacious and effective in preventing drug use and sexual risk behaviors; unfortunately, they have not been evaluated and disseminated in pediatric primary care practice, where they can have a significant impact. There is an increased focus on integrating parenting interventions into primary care to reduc...

Cardiovascular disparities remain pervasive in the United States. Unequal disease burden is evident among population groups based on sex, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, nativity, or geography. Despite the significant declines in cardiovascular disease mortality rates in all demographic groups during the last 50 years...

This study tests a theoretical cascade model in which multiple dimensions of facilitator delivery predict indicators of participant responsiveness, which in turn lead to improvements in targeted program outcomes. An effectiveness trial of the 10-session New Beginnings Program for divorcing families was implemented in partnership with four county-le...

Background Implementing treatments and interventions with demonstrated effectiveness is critical for improving patient health outcomes at a reduced cost. When an evidence-based intervention (EBI) is implemented with fidelity in a setting that is very similar to the setting wherein it was previously found to be effective, it is reasonable to anticip...

Integrative Data Analysis (IDA) encompasses a collection of methods for data synthesis that pools participant-level data across multiple studies. Compared with single-study analyses, IDA provides larger sample sizes, better representation of participant characteristics, and often increased statistical power. Many of the methods currently available...

The wide variety of dissemination and implementation designs now being used to evaluate and improve health systems and outcomes warrants review of the scope, features, and limitations of these designs. This article is one product of a design workgroup that was formed in 2013 by the National Institutes of Health to address dissemination and implemen...

Objective: Four randomized controlled trials revealed that virtual-reality job interview training (VR-JIT) improved interviewing skills and the odds of obtaining a job offer among trainees with severe mental illness or autism spectrum disorder. This study assessed whether postintervention interviewing skills mediated the relationship between compl...

Background: There is an ongoing need for effective and accessible preventive interventions for adolescent depression and substance abuse. This paper reports on a field trial of an online indicated preventive intervention, ProjectTECH, which is based on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques. The study aims to gather information about the fea...

Background: Individuals with severe mental illness have low employment rates, and the job interview presents a critical barrier for obtaining employment. Four randomized controlled trials (RCTs) revealed that virtual reality job interview training (VR-JIT) improved interviewing skills and the odds of obtaining a job offer among trainees with severe...

Individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis is a meta-analysis in which the individual-level data for each study are obtained and used for synthesis. A common challenge in IPD meta-analysis is when variables of interest are measured differently in different studies. The term harmonization has been coined to describe the procedure of placing var...

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of an evidence-based, parent-centered intervention, Familias Unidas, delivered by nonresearch personnel, in preventing substance use (alcohol, illicit drugs) and sex without a condom among Hispanic adolescents. Methods: A randomized controlled trial (n = 746) evaluated the effectiveness of Familias Unida...

A wide variety of dissemination and implementation designs are now being used to evaluate and improve health systems and outcomes. This chapter discusses randomized and nonrandomized designs for the traditional translational research continuum or pipeline, which builds on existing efficacy and effectiveness trials to examine how one or more evidenc...

This paper presents the first findings of an integrative data analysis of individual-level data from 19 adolescent depression prevention trials (n = 5210) involving nine distinct interventions across 2 years post-randomization. In separate papers, several interventions have been found to decrease the risk of depressive disorders or elevated depress...

An examination of the content and processes of evidence-based programs is critical for empirically evaluating theories about how programs work, the “action theory” of the program (West et al. in American Journal of Community Psychology, 21, 571–605, 1993). The New Beginnings Program (NBP; Wolchik et al., 2007), a parenting-after-divorce preventive...

Background To improve the quality, quantity, and speed of implementation, careful monitoring of the implementation process is required. However, some health organizations have such limited capacity to collect, organize, and synthesize information relevant to its decision to implement an evidence-based program, the preparation steps necessary for su...

Drug use represents a major public health problem facing America’s youth (Johnston et al. 2011a). The effects of drug use on physical health in adolescents are severe. For example, approximately 75 % of all deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to accidents, assaults/homicides, intentional harm/suicides, HIV/AIDS, and chronic lower respiratory disea...

The delivery of prevention services to children and adolescents through traditional healthcare settings is challenging for a variety of reasons. Parent- and community-focused services are typically not reimbursable in traditional medical settings, and personal healthcare services are often designed for acute and chronic medical treatment rather tha...

Background: Sustaining prevention efforts directed at substance use and mental health problems is one of the greatest, yet least understood, challenges in the field of implementation science. A large knowledge gap exists regarding the meaning of the term "sustainment" and what factors predict or even measure sustainability of effective prevention...

Prevention programs that strengthen parenting and family functioning have been found to reduce poor behavioral outcomes in adolescents, including substance use, HIV risk, externalizing and internalizing problems. However, there is evidence that not all youth benefit similarly from these programs. Familias Unidas is a family-focused intervention des...

Internet-connected devices are changing the way people live, work, and relate to one another. For prevention scientists, technological advances create opportunities to promote the welfare of human subjects and society. The challenge is to obtain the benefits while minimizing risks. In this article, we use the guiding principles for ethical human su...

Background Although many behavioral interventions have proven to be efficacious, new methodologies are required beyond efficacy trials to understand how to adopt, implement with fidelity, and sustain behavioral interventions in community settings. In this paper, we present a new approach, based on systems engineering concepts and methods, for chara...

Familias Unidas is a family-focused preventive intervention that has been found to reduce drug use and sexual risk behaviors among Hispanic adolescents. In some trials, Familias Unidas has also been found to be efficacious in reducing adolescent internalizing symptoms (i.e., depressive and anxiety symptoms), even though the intervention did not spe...

Mediation analysis often requires larger sample sizes than main effect analysis to achieve the same statistical power. Combining results across similar trials may be the only practical option for increasing statistical power for mediation analysis in some situations. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate: (1) marginal means for mediation p...

Meta-analytic methods for combining data from multiple intervention trials are commonly used to estimate the effectiveness of an intervention. They can also be extended to study comparative effectiveness, testing which of several alternative interventions is expected to have the strongest effect. This often requires network meta-analysis (NMA), whi...

This study highlights how Familias Unidas, a Hispanic-specific, evidence-based, family centered preventive intervention, progressed from intervention development (type 1 translation; T1) through rigorous evaluation (T2) and examines the role of intervention fidelity—adherence and competence—in a T3 trial. Effects of participant, provider, and organ...

A potential new arena that could lead to major advances in implementation science involves the integration of computational and technologic approaches with behavioral and organizational sciences. While some attention has been given to the use of systems science methods, specifically agent-based modeling, social network analysis, and system dynamics...