High quality delivery of evidence-based psychosocial interventions (EBPIs) in primary care medicine is a function of many variables, including clinician training and ready access to EBPI decision support. Importantly, quality is also driven by the clinician's ability to implement the therapeutic elements of EBPIs to fidelity and with competence. Even when clinicians undergo rigorous training, and find the intervention components useful in care, clinicians significantly drift from the original protocol because the processes, structure and elements of care frequently clash with clinician productivity and the shifting needs of the patient populations they serve. Clinicians in low resource settings like federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) report that while elements of EBPIs are important, their design is cumbersome, complex, overwhelming, inflexible, and minimize the nonspecific factors clinicians feel are crucial for quality delivery of care. In short, EBPIs demonstrate low usability (i.e., the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use. Although many implementation science (IS) frameworks do address the importance of EBPI characteristics, adapting and modifying EBPIs to enhance usability has not been a focus. User centered design (UCD) approaches, which have been successful in creating hardware and software tools that are accessible and compelling to use, have the potential to modify EBPIs so that they are accessible and compelling to clinicians. We hypothesize that UCD-driven modifications to EBPI usability will result in enhanced clinician ability to deliver EBPI elements competently (target), and that better competence results in better patient-reported outcomes. We will modify Behavioral Activation (BA) because it is the EBPI often used in primary care settings. To prepare for a larger trial to test hypotheses regarding the impact of EBPI usability on uptake, fidelity and competence, the aims of Project 002 R34 are:~Aim 1: Discover Phase (3 months). Using iterative and participatory methods, we will interview up to 15 clinicians from FHQCs affiliated with the WWAMI region Practice Research Network (WPRN, a collaborative group of primary care practices through the states of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho to facilitate innovative community-based research), and observe them in routine practice to identify usability challenges. Contribution to the Center: Data from this phase will be used to inform the Typology of EBPI Targets.~Aim 2: Design/Build Phase (6 months) After identification of potential targets, the research team will work via Zoom teleconferencing with the original clinicians from the discover phase and 0-5 new clinicians to engage in a rapid cycle of iterative prototype development and testing (e.g., storyboarding, paper prototypes) of BA modifications. The build of these modifications will include the development of intervention prototypes for user testing and refinement with input from these care managers. Contribution to the Center: Data from this phase will be used to inform the Matrix of EBPI Modifications.~Aim 3: Test Phase (15 months). We will test and compare the BA modification (Task Sharing) to usual care in a small non-randomized trial. We will assign all provider teams (therapist & care manager(s)) in the clinic to use Task Sharing with their patients. We will then compare patient outcomes for those receiving Task Sharing vs. patients receiving usual clinic care. H1: Modifications developed in the Design/Build phase for targets identified in the Discover Phase will result in better usability (System Usability and User Burden Scales) compared to usual care. H2: Task Sharing will be more effective than usual care on improving clinical outcomes of functional disability (Sheehan Disability Scale [SDS]), change in depression symptoms over time (PHQ-9 total score), and change in anxiety symptoms over time (GAD-7 total score).
Evidence-based psychosocial interventions are rarely used in part because of their design complexity. Although many implementation frameworks do address the importance of EBPI characteristics, adapting and modifying EBPIs to enhance usability has not been a focus. User-centered design (UCD) approaches, which have been successful in creating hardware and software tools that are accessible and compelling to use, have the potential to modify EBPIs so that they are accessible and compelling to clinicians. We hypothesize that UCD driven modifications to EBPI usability (target mechanism) will result in enhanced clinician ability to deliver EBPI elements competently, and that better competence results in better patient reported outcomes. We will modify Behavioral Activation (BA), an EBPI often used in primary care, to function as a Task Sharing model between clinicians and care managers. Our specific aims are to (1) identify usability problems clinicians and care managers encounter with BA (2) create a clinician- and care manager-driven modification of BA and (3) compare the modified Task Sharing version of BA to usual care on usability, clinician competence, and patient reported outcomes.