Implementation Science

The Beidas Implementation Science Team seeks to close research-to-practice gaps using insights from implementation science and behavioral economics to make it easier for clinicians, leaders, and organizations to use best practices to improve the quality and equity of care and enhance health outcomes.

The Beidas Implementation Science Team innovates methodological approaches within implementation science across areas including mental health, firearm safety promotion, cancer, HIV, and cardiovascular disease and collaborates closely with key partners, including patients, clinicians, health system leaders, payers, and policymakers to conduct their embedded work for impact. 

For more information, see Beidas' faculty profile or the Suicide and Accident prevention through Family Education (SAFE) website.

Franklin’s current research advances the integration of patient-reported, clinical and device data to improve patient care decisions and aggregate population outcomes in aging adults with knee and hip osteoarthritis. Under her leadership, the FORCE-TJR research registry established an international reputation for implementing patient-reported outcomes as the primary outcome following total joint replacement surgery.

Since 2010, FORCE-TJR has aggregated U.S. norms for pain, function and adverse events following total joint replacement surgery to inform quality benchmarks and research standards. Today, her interdisciplinary national team collects annual longitudinal outcomes on the FORCE cohort, collaborates in evaluations of bundled payment outcome measures and develops and tests innovative phone apps, brief patient-reported measures and new informatics tools to accelerate the implementation of patient-centered predictive analytics in clinical care. Specifically, based on prediction models using the FORCE-TJR cohort, her team is testing web-based, shared decision tools that predict patient-defined priority outcomes and present the data in patient-defined visual formats to guide treatment decisions. These methods can be readily extrapolated across diverse chronic conditions.

For more information, see Franklin's faculty profile or the Function and Outcomes Research for Comparative Effectiveness in Total Joint Replacement website.

See Franklin's publications on PubMed.

Contact

patricia.franklin@northwestern.edu
312-503-9803

Program Staff

• Christina P. Bond, MS
  Lead, National Patient Recruitment
• Martha Burla, MPH
  Director of Research Operations
• Julie Kay
  Administration
  312-503-1725

Graham is a clinical psychologist and health services scientist specializing in using digital technologies for the screening, prevention and treatment of eating disorders and obesity. Graham’s research program is housed within the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies and shares the mission of increasing access to high-quality care using scalable interventions. More specifically, her work focuses on designing and testing screening tools and interventions for youth, adults and families and on evaluating their implementation. She also is interested in understanding issues that impact adoption of interventions in practice, such as the costs of treatment, and in training providers to deliver evidence-based interventions for mental and behavioral health problems.

For more information, see Graham's faculty profile or the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies.

Publications

See Graham’s publications on PubMed.

Contact

andrea.graham@northwestern.edu
312-503-5266

The majority of his research focuses on the health and development of LGBT youth and the application of new media and technology to sexual health promotion and HIV prevention. Mustanski’s work spans the translational spectrum and includes epidemiological studies, longitudinal cohort studies focused on developmental trajectories and rick/protective mechanism, the development and testing of HIV interventions and dissemination/implementation science.

Mustanski leads a large translational research program of HIV and LGBT health projects. These include studies of the ethics of conducting LGBT health research with adolescents (funded by the National Institute of Minority Health Disparities) and interventions to prevent HIV among young gay/bisexual men (funded by the National institute of Mental Health and National Institute on Drug Abuse). He is currently leading a large-scale study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to understand the interplay between biology, romantic relationships, networks and neighborhoods in explaining the epidemic of HIV among young gay/bisexual men.

For more information, see Mustanski's faculty profile or the The Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH) website.

Publications

See Mustanski’s publications on PubMed.

Contact

brian@northwestern.edu
312-503-6509

Leveraging expertise in implementation science, global health, epidemiology, and multiple data collection methods, Van Pelt’s research has spanned the translational research continuum from novel epidemiologic investigations to the systematic implementation of effective interventions.

Her current research program focuses on increasing the uptake of evidence-based practices in resource-limited settings, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. She has a particular interest in HIV and pediatrics. However, as an implementation science methodologist, she collaborates on research addressing diverse disease areas, including infectious diseases, mental health, and non-communicable diseases. Van Pelt is passionate about advancing the field of implementation science, so her program also includes capacity building related scholarship.

For more information, see Van Pelt's faculty profile.

Scott’s program of research is housed within the Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science (CDIS) and focuses on employing implementation science methods to enhance the scale up of evidence-based practices across both health systems and community-based treatment settings. Her research is particularly focused on improving the quality of care for individuals receiving treatment for opioid use disorder.

Scott currently leads two National Institute on Drug Abuse funded studies with Chicagoland and Pennsylvania opioid treatment program partners to assess the effectiveness and implementation of measurement-based care, an intervention that uses assessment tools to monitor treatment progress and support collaborative treatment planning. She also serves as the Director of the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute's Dissemination and Implementation Science Consult Service, which provides dissemination and implementation science training, mentorship, and grant support services to the Northwestern community.

For more informations see Scott's faculty profile or the CDIS website.

The Psychosocial Genetics Research Lab focuses on the ethical and equitable implementation of genetics in healthcare. By integrating family systems, health psychology, and implementation science into genetic research, the lab seeks to understand how genetic information affects individuals and communities, with a particular emphasis on reducing disparities and promoting fair access to genetic advancements.

The current areas of focus for our lab are facilitating cascade genetic testing for underserved populations, advocacy and psychosocial support for families with rare or undiagnosed conditions, community-based implementation of genetic testing for Asian Alcohol Flushing Syndrome.

For more informations see Young's faculty profile.