An Evidence-Based Leadership Training Intervention to Accelerate Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care

Integrated behavioral health (IBH) holds great promise for improving care quality and outcomes for patients with co-occurring mental and physical health conditions by embedding mental health and substance use treatment services into primary care settings. Despite over two decades of effort, however, there still lacks widespread IBH implementation due to insufficient leadership skills to overcome organizational, attitudinal, and financial challenges. This study develops and tests an evidence-based IBH intervention that incorporates leadership concepts to prepare primary care teams to overcome IBH challenges and lead IBH implementation initiatives using three aims: (1) to identify IBH implementation challenges, strategies, and leadership skills needed to successfully implement IBH; (2) to develop an intervention that uses IBH implementation strategies and leadership training to accelerate IBH into primary care settings; and (3) to conduct a preliminary effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability pilot by implementing and evaluating the intervention in practice settings. This project is being led by an investigator from Rutgers Center for State Health Policy and is supported by a grant from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.