Grant: Project Grant - PA: Patient-Oriented Research - Implementation Science

One in five children and adolescents face mental health issues, making timely and appropriate care crucial. Measurement-based care (MBC) involves young people regularly filling out standardized questionnaires to monitor their treatment progress. MBC has been shown to enhance mental health treatments and provides data on how well programs meet young people's needs, helping health systems improve care. However, implementing MBC in child and adolescent mental health services is complex, involving organizational, technological, and behavioral changes. Currently, there is limited research on how to effectively implement MBC, meaning it is not widely used, and therefore care for many young people is sub-optimal. With this project, we aim to implement MBC in 9 child and adolescent mental health clinics. We have brought together a national team of experts in MBC, implementation science, and child and adolescent mental health, and provincial and national mental health stakeholders. We have an established partnership with the Child & Adolescent Addiction, Mental Health & Psychiatry Program in Calgary, Alberta. This project builds on prior work together to implement and evaluate MBC in one of their centres. The project has three main goals. First, we want to learn about the common barriers and facilitators to implementing MBC across settings. Then, we will implement MBC in a staged approach, with 3 clinics starting in each of three stages. Once MBC is implemented, we will evaluate the success of the implementation and how MBC has changed care outcomes for young people. Finally, we will analyze the implementation process to identify factors that contribute to implementation success. The findings from this study will be used to create a detailed guide for implementing MBC in child and adolescent mental health services. This will allow other Canadian jurisdictions to effectively implement MBC, leading to improved mental health outcomes for young people across Canada.