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Transforming the understanding
and treatment of mental illnesses.

Innovative Mental Health Services Research Not Involving Clinical Trials (R01)

Presenter:

Susan T. Azrin, Ph.D.
Division of Services and Intervention Research

Goal:

This initiative is a reissue of the Innovative Mental Health Services Research Not Involving Clinical Trials (R01) program announcement, PAR-17-264.  This initiative is intended to foster R01-level non-clinical trial mental health services research that aligns with Goal 4 of the NIMH Strategic Plan for Research: Strengthen the Public Health Impact of NIMH-Supported Research.

Rationale:

NIMH seeks new and innovative research that will inform, support, and improve the adoption, sustained implementation, and continuous improvement of high-quality mental health services to benefit the greatest number of individuals with or at risk for developing a mental illness. Proposed research should seek to accomplish the following: 1) identify mutable factors that impact access, continuity, quality, equity, and value of care that may serve as targets for future intervention development; 2) develop and test new research tools, technologies, measures, or methods and statistical approaches to study these issues; and, 3) integrate and analyze large data sets to understand factors affecting mental health services and outcomes.

Research can target patients, providers, clinics, and healthcare or other systems that provide mental health services. NIMH encourages investigators to design their studies to maximize the likelihood that findings will meaningfully inform and be translated into practice, whether at the patient, clinic, system, or policy level. Such research should be conducted in community practice and externally valid settings; involve research participants from highly generalizable target populations, including racially and ethnically diverse samples and those with co-occurring conditions; and, utilize care providers and technologies that can be readily and widely implemented in routine care settings. NIMH encourages investigators to partner with public and private stakeholders. Such collaborations may help ensure findings are relevant, practical, and actionable.

This initiative aims to continue to provide a mechanism to solicit high-priority services research in areas such as suicide prevention; increasing access to evidence-based mental health care for children, adolescents, and adults with mental disorders; optimizing treatment for individuals with serious mental illness, including early psychosis; rigorous quality improvement strategies within a learning health care framework; optimizing service use, delivery, and outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorder across the lifespan; and, advancing innovative mental health service research methods.