Gregory Aarons, PhD

Professor and Director, Child and Adolescent Services Research Center
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive (0812)
San Diego, CA
USA 92093


Biographical Sketch: Dr. Aarons is a clinical and organizational psychologist, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), a faculty member in the UCSD/SDSU Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, Director of the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC) and Co-Director of the Center for Organizational Research on Implementation and Leadership. Dr. Aarons' research, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Centers for Disease Control, focuses on identifying and improving system, organizational, and individual factors that impact successful implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices and quality of care in health care and public sector practice settings. Dr. Aarons is Principal Investigator of a recently completed NIMH-funded study of a statewide evidence-based practice implementation in the Oklahoma child welfare system and a CDC-funded study that developed a novel implementation approach that uses a collaborative process to support appropriate adaptation of evidence-based practice and system and organizational characteristics during implementation throughout the state of California. Dr. Aarons' current grants include an NIMH-funded project focusing on how to effectively implement an evidence-based HIV preventive intervention among high-risk women in Mexico, using an interagency collaborative approach to scaling up evidence-based practice across an entire service system, working across two states and 87 counties to examine the interaction of policy and organizational capacity factors in long-term sustainment of evidence-based practice, developing practical measures of organizational leadership and climate, and developing leadership and organizational change strategies to support evidence-based practice implementation. His most current work focuses on improving organizational context and training managers and supervisors to become effective leaders, to create a positive implementation climate, and to successfully lead evidence-based practice implementation in their teams and organizations. Other lines of inquiry involve understanding and improving implementation in low- and middle-income countries.

Papers:
PM13 INTRODUCTION TO IMPLEMENTATION SCIENCE