March 2020 Newsletter

Spotlight: Brooks Keeshin, Cohort Two Fellow

Dr. Brooks Keeshin, Cohort Two fellow, is a Clinician Researcher at the University of Utah in the Department of Pediatrics and provides clinical care at Primary Children’s Center for Safe and Healthy Families. His primary focus is on the early identification and treatment of children and adolescents at risk for traumatic stress, including the development and implementation of trauma and suicide screening, and response and triage strategies for high and lower risk populations. He is interested in how systems can utilize standardized approaches to trauma and suicide prevention that are acceptable to families, feasible to implement and allow for the ongoing collection of data for continuous quality improvement.

His current work is focused in three main areas. Brooks is the Project Director and Principal Investigator of a Category II Center of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network – Pediatric Integrated Post-trauma Services (PIPS). In partnership with organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Children’s Alliance, PIPS is developing, implementing and evaluating a short and easy-to-use trauma and suicide screening and response model for primary care clinics and children’s advocacy centers. Thus far the model has been implemented in over a dozen advocacy centers and in several large pediatric clinics in Utah, with implementation plans either underway or planned in another six states. Additionally, Brooks directs the Utah Psychotropic Oversight Program (UPOP), which is responsible for ensuring that Utah children and adolescents in foster care are receiving safe, evidence-based and trauma informed psychiatric services. Brooks also delivers trauma informed psychiatric services as part of a multidisciplinary, trauma focused and evidence-based clinic, the Center for Safe and Healthy Families. Ongoing efforts within that clinic have led to the development of care algorithms to help choose among evidence-based treatment options in trauma exposed children and adolescents, as well as redefining the role of psychiatric services within a multidisciplinary trauma treatment team.

Of the Doris Duke Fellowships, Brooks says, “My experience in the fellowship was foundational to how I think about child maltreatment and academics in general. For me, learning with and from fellows in various academic fields brought me out of my medicine/health care bubble! Within my formal medical training, the Doris Duke Fellowships provided my only substantive experience in the area of prevention, allowing me to think with a prevention (rather than intervention) and well-being lens in our projects and efforts. Furthermore, the idea that our research and other academic projects not just improve clinical care, but must always be with an eye towards shaping policy is a core lesson that continues to permeate all of our academic efforts.”

Research and Practice Partnership Spotlight: Kerrie Ocasio and the New Jersey Pre-and Post-Adoption Counseling Services Evaluation

Dr. Kerrie Ocasio, Cohort One fellow and Assistant Professor at West Chester University, has been partnering with The Pre-and Post-Adoption Counseling Service (PACS) and New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF) since 2017 to build capacity to evaluate the services PACS provides. PACS has been a foundation of adoption practice in New Jersey for nearly 40 years, working to promote relationship building and using various family and individual counseling techniques with adoptive and guardianship families from public and private systems.

The project began with a capacity building grant from the National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship support and Preservation (QIC-AG). Using that funding, Kerrie, PCS, and DCF developed a logic model and identified measures that could be used for treatment assessment and evaluation purposes. Formative evaluation began in 2018, with a focus on understanding what approaches clinicians were using with families and the circumstances under which they were making practice choices. In 2019, Kerrie received another capacity building grant from the QIC-AG. Using the data from the formative evaluation and with the support of two experts in the program, a service guide was developed and adopted in January 2020. Throughout the process of developing the logic model, identifying measures, developing assessment procedures, and developing the service guide, the PACS clinicians and DCF adoption staff were actively engaged in the process and took on leadership responsibilities to support the effort.

Data collection continues and the project is moving into the summative evaluation stage, where the program will be evaluated under real world conditions using the service guide to standardize practice. Options for experimental or quasi-experimental research are being explored. Developing the fundamentals needed to attempt experimental research has been a lengthy process, but is necessary if long-standing, homegrown programs are going to continue to receive funding as the tide shifts in favor of evidence-based services. To learn more about this project, contact Kerrie Ocasio.

Small Group Update

Photo by Katherine Taylor, Boston University School of Social Work magazine.

The Cohort Seven Small Group consisting of: Lindsay Zajac, Sarah Prendergast, Kenny Feder, Bridget Cho, and Catherine Kuhns, along with Academic Mentor, Mary Dozier, published an article in Child Abuse and Neglect on the trajectories of sleep in CPS-referred children and its impact on early childhood. The group analyzed sleep diaries kept by parents for their children, as well as checklists and measures for almost 200 participants. The study is an important next step and underscores sleep as a promising target for interventions aimed at promoting regulation and a potential predictor of later developmental outcomes.

Fellows Updates:

Anika Schenck-Fontaine, Cohort Six fellow, recently published a new article in Children and Youth Services Review on income inequality and child maltreatment risk during economic recession.

Sheridan Miyamoto, Cohort Three fellow, published results from a study funded by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania. The team plans on creating a podcast to further disseminate the results and how they translate throughout the nation.

Byron Powell, Cohort Two fellow, was recently elected President of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC) and appointed Co-Director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research.

He published a systematic review of determinants of implementing evidence-based trauma-focused treatments for children and youth (along with Colleen Katz, Cohort Three fellow) and a protocol for a study that aims to improve the implementation of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis recently highlighted his work in the article, From Evidence-Based Practices to Improvements in Care.

Leah Bartley, Cohort Four fellow, recently co-authored a chapter in Implementation Science 3.0 on leading and sustaining change from the viewpoint of a stakeholder. She also co-authored an article for The Annie E. Casey Foundation about developing evidence-based child welfare preventative practice change.

Aditi Srivastav, Cohort Seven fellow, recently received the honor of the James E. Clyburn Health Equity Leadership Award as an Emerging Leader in the Public Health and Health Disparities Research. This prestigious award recognizes contributions made by individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to improving and protecting the health of the community.

Kristen Seay, Cohort Two fellow, has recently published multiple articles:

Bridget Cho, Cohort Seven fellow, her Policy Mentor, Briana Woods-Jaeger, and other colleagues, published a manuscript in Training and Education in Professional Psychology about increasing focus on social determinants of health for psychologists in training.