Curriculum

• Beginning in 2008 with generous funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R25DA026637, PI: Julie A. Schumacher, Program of Excellence in Practice and Dissemination of Motivational Interviewing), the UMMC Training Program began development and implementation of our Practice and Dissemination Curriculum. The curriculum was developed in response to increasing awareness of Training Program faculty that dissemination and implementation of evidence based behavioral treatments remains a major challenge for researchers, professional organizations, and federal and state agencies.
• Despite the discovery of several promising therapeutic interventions for a variety of disorders, the gap between research and practice still exists and many practitioners continue to rely on treatments supported only by anecdotal and idiographic evidence. Further, although many facilities and practitioners base their treatment philosophy on evidence based practices, the treatment provided may bear little to no resemblance to actual evidence-based practices.
• We believe that research oriented doctoral training programs, internship programs, and postdoctoral fellowship programs in psychology currently represent an important mechanism through which evidence based behavioral practices are disseminated. However, many of these programs, including our own Training Program, specialize in training individuals who seek to become academic psychologists rather than full-time practitioners. Thus, our Practice and Dissemination Curriculum is designed to foster broader dissemination and implementation of evidence based behavioral treatments by these programs.
• The intent of this curriculum is to foster ongoing dissemination and implementation of evidence based practices in the state of Mississippi and beyond by: 1) fully integrating the curriculum into our training program, 2) instilling a desire for further dissemination and implementation work in our trainees, and 3) disseminating the curriculum as a model for training. The focus of this curriculum from 2008-2013 was motivational interviewing for substance us disorders, from 2013-2016 it was exposure-based treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder, and from 2016-2022 will focus on Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for substance use disorders. Beginning the 2022-2023 training year and continuing to the 2023-2024 training year, with the generous grant support from HRSA (PI: Sarver), the focus will be on Integrated Behavioral Health.