Advancing the state-level tracking of evidence-based practices: a case study.

Background: Despite a sustained focus by policymakers and researchers on improving the standard of clinical care in public mental health services, the use of evidence-based practice remains low. Among other challenges, this reflects the difficulty of translating clinical research into useable policy that can be feasibly funded and monitored by state or large healthcare systems.

Case Presentation: In this paper we present a case study of Washington State's strategy for monitoring the use of clinical elements at the session level for all Medicaid-funded children's mental health services.

Evidence-Based Program Service Deserts: A Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Approach to Identifying Service Gaps for State-Level Implementation Planning.

The long term effects of untreated mental health need for individuals, families and society has prompted a number of federal policy statements encouraging the use of evidence-based programs (EBP) in children's healthcare. However, among other challenges of evidence-based practice implementation, states often do not know where to make investments based on population need. In this paper we present the use of a Geographic Information System approach to undertake a mental health needs assessment for Washington State.