Autism research consortium - title: autism research consortium in behavioral health FOA:(HRSA-25-021)

Need: over 70% of children and adolescents on the autism spectrum have at least one CO-occurring behavioral condition (e.g., behavior disorder; depression; anxiety; adhd) with 40-60% having two or more. Barriers: evidence-based behavioral health interventions (EBI) exist to support reduction of anxiety, depression and other behavioral health concerns in autistic children and adolescents, however, they are not often used in routine care due to a variety of implementation challenges. Strategies and infrastructure for broader, successful implementation are essential for improving well-being, employment and other long term outcomes for autistic individuals. Solutions: implementation science research has identified specific organization-level strategies necessary to facilitate adoption, effective use and sustainment of behavioral health interventions for autism with providers working across service systems. The current proposal aims to advance the evidence-based on implementation strategies to support successful scale up and translation of evidence-based behavioral health interventions in autism for community practice, thereby increasing reach and outcomes. Goals and objectives: we have brought together leading implementation scientists and autism behavioral health intervention developers to build the research infrastructure needed to use community-partnered implementation science methods to facilitate testing of recently identified, effective organization-level interventions that will facilitate EBI implementation across service systems. Goals include (1) engaging an interdisciplinary network of community partnerships at six sites across the country to build and scale up high quality use of autism behavioral health interventions in many different settings and with multiple interventions. (2) building a strong research infrastructure which will include tools to implement, adapt and test organizational strategies, and an aggregated data repository across multiple studies using these strategies to identify key mechanisms and appropriate adaptation for different settings and EBI. (3) conducting multiple research studies testing organization-level strategies with autism EBI and their effect on implementation and child outcomes. At least one study will focus specifically on adaptation of an organization-level strategy to facilitate behavioral health workforce development. All research will be conducted in public service systems with community partners from these systems to ensure increased access for all autistic youth. (4) disseminating research findings and tools widely to multiple audiences. (5) providing infrastructure for pilot studies, consultation, webinars and training to support mentorship for early career investigators and investigators needing consultation in community engaged implementation science and translation of interventions for scale up. Studies to move the field forward. Evaluation: the steering committee will assess progress on goals, activities and objectives through multiple methods. Team cohesion and partnership functioning across the consortium will be examined. Quality improvement will ensure barriers are addressed. The consortium will develop recommendations and support scientific studies to guide effective translation of research on behavioral health interventions for autism into public services to support higher quality of life for autistic individuals and their families.