TWC Guest Speaker: Prof. Kim Becker on Designing and Testing a Coordinated Knowledge System to Improve Service Quality and Treatment Engagement for Youth and Families

Posted April 13, 2023
TWC Guest Speaker: Kim Becker on Designing and Testing a Coordinated Knowledge System to Improve Service Quality and Treatment Engagement for Youth and Families
TWC Guest Speaker: Kim Becker on Designing and Testing a Coordinated Knowledge System to Improve Service Quality and Treatment Engagement for Youth and Families
3p, Weds, 12 Apr 2023 (Winslow 1140)

Abstract: Low treatment engagement is a ubiquitous challenge in youth mental health services, such that many youths discontinue treatment after only 1-2 appointments (Saloner et al., 2014). Despite the significance of low treatment engagement in youth mental health services, the field offers almost no guidance to mental health providers about: (1) how to assess engagement; thus, providers tend to rely on their own observations of engagement (namely, attendance) (Becker, Wu et al., 2021) and (2) what clinical procedures to use when they encounter engagement challenges in clinical practice; thus, providers frequently use procedures that are not well-suited to the specific engagement problem at hand (Becker, Dickerson et al., 2021). In its current form, engagement science is not well-suited to inform engagement practice. This presentation will feature our efforts focused on improving how evidence informs clinical decision and actions, with the ultimate aim of improving treatment engagement in community mental health services for youths and families.

Biography: Kimberly Becker, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina (USC). She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, completed her postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University, and held a faculty position at the University of Maryland prior to moving to USC in 2017. Dr. Becker is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on improving the effectiveness of children’s mental health services, with specific interests in clinical decision-making and treatment engagement. Dr. Becker has published more than 75 scientific articles and has received research funding from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Klingenstein Foundation. With multiple awards from the William T. Grant Foundation since 2017, Dr. Becker and her colleague Dr. Bruce Chorpita (UCLA) have been investigating strategies to improve the use of evidence by mental health providers to increase youth and family engagement in mental health services. 

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