SSW Faculty Showcase Research at Annual Science Dissemination and Implementation Conference

In December 2024, two SSW faculty members presented their research at the 17th Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health in Arlington, Virginia. 

The conference, hosted by the National Institutes of Health and AcademyHealth, a nonprofit organizations that aims to present objective knowledge to inform health policy and practice, gathers research scientists and policymakers to discuss the latest research that could improve the impact of public health policy.

• Associate Professor Amy Krentzman and MSW Graduate Student Sonia Harris presented research titled "Using Participant Feedback to Iteratively Improve Training for Positive Recovery Journaling, an Intervention for Substance Use Disorders," which identified specific journaling techniques that support individuals in the early stages of recovery.
• Assistant Professor Yuanyuan Hu presented her research titled "Examining the Implementation of Mental Health Task Sharing Community-Based Aging Services for Older Chinese Adults: A Multiple Case Study,” which examined the benefits of engaging non-mental health clinicians in screening processes.

Refining the Techniques that Effectively Support Recovery from Substance Use Disorder

Individuals recovering from substance-use disorder face simultaneous physical, emotional, and social challenges. Krentzman developed a daily therapeutic practice called “Positive Recovery Journaling” (PRJ), which tasks individuals with reviewing the events of their day through a positive lens and making plans for the next day through that lens.

After developing this technique, Krentzman and her co-authors designed a study that would teach the technique to counselors who would use it with their clients, solicit their feedback, and adjust aspects of the technique based on participant feedback.

“Positive Recovery Journaling had shown promising results in small pilot studies, but we didn't know what counselors would think of it if they used it with their clients,” Krentzman said. “In the study we presented, we recruited 38 counselors from six countries to teach them PRJ and support them as they used PRJ with clients. In this study, counselors used PRJ with 180 clients.”

Krentzman and her co-authors discovered that incorporating counselor feedback was important to their perception of the technique: “We used iterative feedback from the first cohort of counselors to improve the training for the next four cohorts of counselors. The results show that when we improved our training approach, the counselors then came away with a more positive view of PRJ.”

Beyond the specific PRJ technique studied, Krentzman notes that the study findings are relevant broadly to people who provide mental health trainings because it shows the value of testing a training approach on a small group, collecting feedback, and improving the training before launching it on a large scale.

Improving Access to Mental Health Services for Older Chinese Immigrants

A high percentage of older Chinese adults experience mental health issues, but a low percentage of this population accesses mental health services. In an effort to address this disparity, Assistant Professor Yuanyuan Hu studied 30 service providers in 14 community-based organizations to understand the process and barriers to connecting older adults to mental health services.

“This study highlights the critical role of community-based aging services in supporting mental health of community-living older adults and the importance of tailoring implementation approaches to serve diverse populations effectively,” said Hu.

Hu and her co-authors found that collaborative task sharing between multidisciplinary providers–primary care providers, community providers, and lay health workers–resulted in the highest use of available mental health services, and also provided community organizations with more funding mechanisms to cover mental health services for older Chinese adults.

“Community leaders can learn that financial incentives significantly influence the scope of services organizations can offer and the success of program implementation,” said Hu. “Fostering collaborations among multidisciplinary providers can bridge gaps between human services and mental health care systems, ensuring more comprehensive and accessible support for aging populations.”