Scale-up of Global Child and Youth Mental Health Services: A Scoping Review.

Numerous influential policy and scientific bodies are calling for more rapid advances in the scale-up of child and youth mental health services (CYMHS). A number of CYMHS innovations hold promise for advancing scale-up but little is known about how real-world efforts are progressing. We conducted a scoping review to identify promising approaches to CYMHS scale-up across the globe.

Using policy codesign to achieve multi-sector alignment in adolescent behavioral health: a study protocol.

Background: Policymaking is quickly gaining focus in the field of implementation science as a potential opportunity for aligning cross-sector systems and introducing incentives to promote population health, including substance use disorders (SUD) and their prevention in adolescents. Policymakers are seen as holding the necessary levers for realigning service infrastructure to more rapidly and effectively address adolescent behavioral health across the continuum of need (prevention through crisis care, mental health, and SUD) and in multiple locations (schools, primary care, community settings). The difficulty of aligning policy intent, policy design, and successful policy implementation is a well-known challenge in the broader public policy and public administration literature that also affects local behavioral health policymaking.

Strategies for enacting health policy codesign: a scoping review and direction for research.

Background: Strategies for supporting evidence-informed health policy are a recognized but understudied area of policy dissemination and implementation science. Codesign describes a set of strategies potentially well suited to address the complexity presented by policy formation and implementation. We examine the health policy literature describing the use of codesign in initiatives intended to combine diverse sources of knowledge and evidence in policymaking.

A landscape assessment of the activities and capacities of evidence-to-policy intermediaries (EPI) in behavioral health.

Background: A significant gap exists between the production of research evidence and its use in behavioral health policymaking. Organizations providing consulting and support activities for improving policy represent a promising source for strengthening the infrastructure to address this gap. Understanding the characteristics and activities of these evidence-to-policy intermediary (EPI) organizations can inform the development of capacity-building activities, leading to strengthened evidence-to-policy infrastructure and more widespread evidence-based policymaking.

Racial disparities in youth pretrial detention: a retrospective cohort study grounded in critical race theory.

Background And Method: Pretrial detention makes up 75% of juvenile detention admissions and contributes to the disproportionate contact of minoritized youth in the juvenile carceral system. Given that prior evidence largely examines differences between Black and white youth, this study expands research on disproportionate contact in the pretrial detention setting to Hispanic/Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian youth. With a sample of over 44,000 juvenile cases in a northwest state, we used a generalized linear mixed model to estimate the effect of individual level characteristics while accounting for the random effect of differences at the county level.

Expert versus Youth Raters on Measuring Social and Therapeutic Climate in Secure Juvenile Placement.

Growing concern about the use of incarceration is driving significant reform in juvenile legal system decision-making and is likely to have a substantial impact on the role residential options play in the future continuum of care. It appears inevitable that surviving institutions or alternative residential models will be increasingly scrutinized for their impact on youth development. While rehabilitative models focused on youth development are a promising and growing part of residential institutions, few tools are available to measure quality.

Reciprocal associations between housing instability and youth criminal legal involvement: a scoping review.

Background: Youth experiencing homelessness have disproportionate contact with the criminal legal system. This system contact represents a critical inflection point for enhancing risk or opportunities for stabilization; however, the policy and scholarly traditions examining the criminal legal system have not traditionally incorporated housing or other social determinants as a central focus of intervention.

Methods: We conducted a scoping review using PRISMA-ScR guidelines to examine how the research literature is currently addressing housing within the context of youth involvement in the legal system.

Cocreating evidence-informed health equity policy with community.

Objective: To explore the feasibility of a rapid, community-engaged strategy to prioritize health equity policy options as informed by research evidence, community-voiced needs, and public health priorities.

Data Sources: Data came from residents in a midsized, demographically, and geographically diverse county over a period of 8 months in 2020 and an evidence review of the health equity policy literature during the same time period.

Study Design: A descriptive case study is used to explore the feasibility and potential value of a community codesigned approach to establish community priorities for health equity policy.

The implementation potential of a method to monitor empirically-supported children's mental health treatment through claims data.

Background: The delivery of evidence-supported treatments (EST) in children's mental health could be a valuable measure for monitoring mental healthcare quality; however, efforts to monitor the use of EST in real world systems are hindered by the lack of pragmatic methods. This mixed methods study examined the implementation and agency response rate of a pragmatic, claims-based measure of EST designed to be applied as a universal quality measure for child psychotherapy encounters in a state Medicaid system.

Methods: Implementation potential of the EST measure was assessed with healthcare leader rankings of the reporting method's acceptability, appropriateness and feasibility (n = 53), and post-implementation ratings of EST rate accuracy.

Accelerating the conceptual use of behavioral health research in juvenile court decision-making: study protocol.

Background: The youth criminal-legal system is under heavy political scrutiny with multiple calls for significant transformation. Leaders within the system are faced with rethinking traditional models and are likely to benefit from behavioral health research evidence as they redesign systems. Little is known about how juvenile court systems access and use behavioral health research evidence; further, the field lacks a validated survey measure of behavioral health research use that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of evidence dissemination interventions for policy and system leaders.

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.

A Research Framework for Understanding the Practical Impact of Family Involvement in the Juvenile Justice System: The Juvenile Justice Family Involvement Model.

Family involvement is recognized as a critical element of service planning for children's mental health, welfare and education. For the juvenile justice system, however, parents' roles in this system are complex due to youths' legal rights, public safety, a process which can legally position parents as plaintiffs, and a historical legacy of blaming parents for youth indiscretions. Three recent national surveys of juvenile justice-involved parents reveal that the current paradigm elicits feelings of stress, shame and distrust among parents and is likely leading to worse outcomes for youth, families and communities.

Achieving successful evidence-based practice implementation in juvenile justice: The importance of diagnostic and evaluative capacity.

Evidence-based programs (EBPs) are an increasingly visible aspect of the treatment landscape in juvenile justice. Research demonstrates that such programs yield positive returns on investment and are replacing more expensive, less effective options. However, programs are unlikely to produce expected benefits when they are not well-matched to community needs, not sustained and do not reach sufficient reach and scale.

The Consistencies and Vagaries of the Washington State Inventory of Evidence-Based Practice: The Definition of "Evidence-Based" in a Policy Context.

As states increasingly establish the importance of evidence-based practice through policy and funding mandates, the definition of evidence-based practice can have a significant impact on investment decisions. Not meeting established criteria can mean a loss of funding for established programs and the implementation disruption of programs without a strong research base. Whether the definition of "evidence-based" is influenced by these high stakes contexts is an interesting question that can inform the larger field about the value and utility of evidence-based practice lists/inventories for disseminating knowledge.

Community-Sourced Intervention Programs: Review of Submissions in Response to a Statewide Call for "Promising Practices".

This study was initiated to add to the nascent literature on locally-grown intervention programs in the youth mental health, child welfare, and juvenile justice service sectors, many of which demonstrate practice-based or community-defined evidence, but may not have been subjected to empirical evaluation. Characteristics of applications submitted in response to three public calls for additions to an inventory of research-supported intervention programs were reviewed on evidence for effectiveness, the use of key quality assurance (QA) elements (e.g.

American Indian perspectives on evidence-based practice implementation: results from a statewide Tribal Mental Health Gathering.

Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices (EBP) within American Indian and Alaskan Natives communities is currently an area of debate and contention. There is considerable concern about expanding EBP policy mandates to AI/AN communities as these mandates, either through funding restrictions or other de facto policies, recall past histories of clinical colonization and exploitation by the state and federal government. As a response, work is being done to evaluate indigenous programs and examine strategies for culturally-sensitive implementation.

Adolescent use of school-based health centers and high school dropout.

Objective: To determine the association between use of school-based health centers (SBHCs) and school dropout.

Design: Quasi-experimental longitudinal analysis of a retrospective student cohort, with SBHC use as the independent variable. We statistically controlled for dropout risk and used propensity score regression adjustment to control for several factors associated with SBHC use.

Alice in actuarial-land: through the looking glass of changing Static-99 norms.

The Static-99, an actuarial rating method, is employed to conduct sexual violence risk assessment in legal contexts. The proponents of the Static-99 dismiss clinical judgment as not empirical. Two elements must be present to apply an actuarial risk model to a specific individual: sample representativeness and uniform measurement of outcome.

Impact of School-Based Health Center use on academic outcomes.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to examine the effects of School-Based Health Center (SBHC) use on academic outcomes for high school students, using a well-controlled, longitudinal model, and (2) to examine whether SBHC medical and mental health service use differentially impacts academic outcomes.

Methods: Analyses used a latent variable growth curve modeling approach to examine longitudinal outcomes over five school semesters for ninth grade SBHC users and nonusers from Fall 2005 to Fall 2007 (n = 2,306). Propensity score analysis was used to control for self-selection factors in the SBHC user and nonuser groups.

Four-facet PCL-R structure and cognitive functioning among high violent criminal offenders.

High violent inmates (N = 126) were administered the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, Clark, Grann, & Thornton, 2000; Hare et al., 1990) and neuropsychological measures. No significant correlations were present between the overall PCL-R score and 14 cognitive measures.

Predicting the likelihood of future sexual recidivism: pilot study findings from a California sex offender risk project and cross-validation of the Static-99.

Pilot findings on 137 California sex offenders followed up over 10 years after release from custody (excluding cases in which legal jurisdiction expired) are presented. The sexual recidivism rate, very likely inflated by sample selection, was 31 percent at five years and 40 percent at 10 years. Cumulatively, markers of sexual deviance (multiple victim types) and criminality (prior parole violations and prison terms) led to improved prediction of sexual recidivism (receiver operating characteristic [ROC] = .

Parenting as a moderator of minority, adolescent victimization and violent behavior in high-risk neighborhoods.

Adolescent male youth in high-crime neighborhoods are at the greatest risk for personal victimization and violent behavior. The temporal relationship between victimization and violent behavior for minority youth in high-crime neighborhoods was examined to determine whether victimization is a risk factor for or by-product of violent behavior. Whether parenting and other control factors moderated the relationship between victimization and violent behavior was also examined.