Disruptive Innovations to Facilitate Better Dissemination and Delivery of Evidence-Based Practices: Leaping Over the Tar Pit

Abstract

ABSTRACTHealth care delivery in the United States is experiencing a tumultuous present and uncertain future. In particular, behavioral health care for youth and their families is facing potentially large funding cuts. These complex changes conspire to sculpt an impending perilous future for children’s behavioral health care. Despite these formidable challenges, there is reason to be optimistic about evidence-based mental health services for children and adolescents if the profession shakes off outdated orthodoxies, operating in silos, and engaging in tired practices. The field is loaded with empirically supported clinical applications for most young patients. The key is to get practitioners, patients, and payers to embrace evidence-based practices more fully. In this article, we present multiple recommendations for innovations that could disrupt the treatment-as-usual (TAU) marketplace. More specifically, we begin with a discussion of disruptive innovations and their precise connection to the dissemination and implementation of EBPs. Second, we present three broad suggestions for disruptive innovations including a call for improved use of social media as an interface for engaging practitioners and behavioral health consumers, an argument for bolder marketing efforts, stronger advocacy for business acumen within the profession as well as encouraging trainers to serve as “ambassadors” for EBPs. The article concludes with a synthesizing section offering implications for administrators and practitioners.