It's Not a Simple Issue Posted on July 7, 2008 Disseminating interventions from the lab to the clinic is not easy, states Joaquin Borrego, Jr (bio).

We don't have a good science at this point on how to effectively transport or disseminate our interventions that we have at university settings into the community where they're really needed. And I think there's a lot of issues to consider, it's just not a simple issue. Let's move this into a clinic. You have to establish a working relationship with the community, seek important stakeholders, such as community mental health directors, community agency executives, the personnel, such as the social workers who are there, the mental health practitioners that are there. And some people don't even have mental health practitioners per se. So you have to consider that, you have to consider how much of a match is there between the treatment verses the setting.

We pride ourselves on these treatment manuals and training graduate students. But given that not every PhD will end up working in the community, how can we base transport that information out into the community in a very efficient manner where it doesn't require a lot of training. Where we can train the people there for them to carry out and train other people. We haven't really figured that piece of the puzzle out. So there's many challenges. There is a great need and we have some of the science in the sense of the treatment packages, but figuring out how to effectively do that, we haven't been able to figure out and I think, at this point in an effective manner.

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