Pre-Conference Workshops

About the Workshops

We are excited to offer 8 free pre-conference workshops! The workshops will be held from 8:30-10:00 AM and 10:30 AM-12:00 PM on Wednesday, October 16. If you wish to attend a workshop, you will be prompted to sign up when you register.

NIH Grantsmanship Workshop (WAITLIST)

October 16, 2024, 8:30-10 AM, Palace Hotel

There have been numerous changes in NIH policies and processes over the last several years – it’s a lot to keep up with. This workshop, designed for established as well as new investigators, will review the things you need to know to successfully compete for, and manage, an NIH grant in addiction health services research. Program officers will cover the basics of early career mechanisms (dissertation grants, fellowships, K awards); new and unusual mechanisms (NOSIs, phased awards); considerations for different funding pathways (NIDA/NIAAA, HEAL, HIV); and changes in pre- and post-award processes (data sharing plans; enrollment tracking; changes to review criteria). There will be ample time for Q&A to address attendees’ interests and priorities.

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Opportunities and Challenges in Applying Digital Health Technology for Addiction Health Services Research (WAITLIST)

October 16, 2024, 8:30-10 AM, Palace Hotel

Digital health technologies (such as electronic health records [EHRs] and health applications [“apps”]) offer new health services research opportunities to evaluate and improve the quality of addiction care. These opportunities include details of clinical information at the patient and population health level not available in claims data, and to tailor care to subsets of populations and evaluate outcomes. Further, there are opportunities for a wide range of research methodological skills sets—such as observational or randomized controlled design, computational data science, generative artificial intelligence (AI), software development, implementation science, and qualitative or mixed methods. But there are also important methodological challenges. For example, EHR adoption lags for behavioral health providers in general, and addiction providers in particular, in part due to the federal privacy law 42 CFR Part 2. Additionally, EHRs often contain incomplete and poor-quality data, with crucial clinical information embedded in notes, necessitating advanced computational techniques for extraction. Apps pose unique challenges—such as ensuring sustained patient engagement for outcomes measurement, and whether or how to integrate their use (and data) into routine care. Recent advancements in generative AI, combined with digital health technologies offer important opportunities to improve care but also pose challenges and concerns that need to be addressed to fully realize these benefits.

This 90-minute panel, which is sponsored by the Brandeis-Harvard NIDA P30 SPIRE Center, will include investigators experienced in using digital health technology in addiction health services research. They will discuss opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned. The moderator, Dr. Busch, will provide introductions and an initial overview (5-7 minutes). The moderator will then provide questions or prompts to the panel to generate a robust discussion among panelists. Audience questions and interaction will be encouraged.

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Implementation Costing and Budget Impact Analysis: An introduction and Application for Research and Practice (WAITLIST)

October 16, 2024, 8:30-10 AM, Palace Hotel

The field of implementation science developed out of a dire need to bridge the extant gap between what we know works and how to effectively translate programs, practices, and policies into real-world settings to achieve public health impact. While many areas of implementation research and practice have undergone significant advancements, measurement and analysis of costs and budget impacts continue to be underutilized. The resources and associated costs required to implement new practices can be a key barrier to the uptake or sustainment of evidence-based interventions (EBIs).

Increasingly, implementation researchers and practitioners recognize the importance of cost and economic evaluation, as evidenced by a recent collection of papers authored by the implementation cost workgroup organized by NCI and the VA Healthcare System, including recommendations for making advancements in this area. A key gap identified in this collection of papers published in Implementation Science and Implementation Science Communications was insufficient guidance on conducting basic cost analyses and useful extensions, such as budget impact analysis (BIA), alongside implementation trials. This workshop will review initial guidance on, examples of, and hands-on activities that conduct pragmatic cost and BIA in implementation science.

This workshop draws from two recently developed tools for costing and BIA. 1) An implementation costing guidebook led by the Colorado Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control (COISC3) that incorporates contributions from other sectors, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) investigators. The guidebook is a comprehensive manual covering the background and fundamental aspects of implementation costing. 2) A budget impact tool developed by NIDA HEAL Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) investigators. The budget impact tool provides users with a framework to estimate the budget impact of their implementation project or research study when replicating to a new setting or scaling up.

Specifically, we will focus on and provide participatory activities on the “how to” component of conducting cost and BIA in implementation projects. We will discuss implementation costs, getting started with collecting cost data, methods to map activities across implementation phases to conduct activity-based costing, and methods for reporting and estimating costs in new settings, related to replication and with various personnel using BIA.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are central to our workshop as we discuss (a) incorporating a community-engaged, collaborative approach with implementation partners, (b) attending to economic issues within the reality of budget constraints and competing demands, (c) examining possible impacts, including economic impacts, from an equity perspective. Disregarding these considerations can result in implementation efforts that are neither feasible nor sustainable and may exacerbate health disparities and related outcomes in the short- and long term.

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Part I. Pragmatic Implementation Science: Five Key Components and One Logic Model to Enhance the Impact of Your Research (WAITLIST) 

October 16, 2024, 8:30-10 AM, Palace Hotel

Implementation science focuses on how to get effective interventions into practice; however, the overwhelming number of theories, models, and frameworks can be daunting to non-experts. The D&I Research Capability Self Survey (DIRC-SS) gathers systematic information about the D&I science aspects of a proposed or existing research project along five key D&I science domains, and can be used in designing or modifying a research study to increase the “implementability” of the intervention. As a next step, researchers can use the Implementation Research Logic Model (IRLM) to help organize the domains to see how they are related to and influence one another. The IRLM is a flexible tool that is highly modifiable for different study designs. This workshop will describe the 5 key D&I domains through brief example projects and their DIRC-SS scores, discuss how the projects could be made more ‘implementable,’ and then demonstrate how the IRLM brings the domains together. Attendees will try their hand at constructing an IRLM for a sample project. No implementation science expertise needed! Attendees may choose one or both of this pair of workshops.

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Methodological Guidance for Conducting Expert Panels with the Delphi Method

October 16, 2024, 10:30 AM-12 PM, Palace Hotel

The Delphi method is an iterative, anonymous, structured, group-based communication process and elicitation technique designed to help policymakers make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and incomplete information. It is based on the premise that asking a hand-picked group of anonymous experts the same questions several times and sharing the other experts’ answers will help objectively develop group consensus, which is used as a form of evidence. Originally developed by RAND researchers as a forecasting methodology in military research, Delphi has undergone many modifications and is now used by different disciplines, most notably by medicine, as a gold-standard approach for expert elicitation and stakeholder engagement. Researchers often rely on Delphi to estimate the probability of an event happening within a certain period of time, to forecast when an event is likely to occur, and to identify and prioritize key policy issues that need to be addressed.

The goal of this training workshop is to provide practical advice for when to use the Delphi method, what type of Delphi to choose, and what to consider when designing, implementing, and reporting Delphi panel results. Planned activities include a lecture on recent RAND methodological guidance for conducting Delphi panels, a walkthrough of a Delphi protocol specific to assessing state-level policies related to substance use, and a group exercise (critical appraisal of a Delphi study using the new RAND Delphi Critical Appraisal Tool). Upon completion of the workshop, attendees researchers will be able to appraise the quality of an already conducted Delphi study, as well as prospectively design and implement their own Delphi study for addiction health services research.

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Leveraging Health Information Technologies to Advance Your Research (WAITLIST)

October 16, 2024, 10:30 AM-12 PM, Palace Hotel

This training will outline team-based approaches to support the interdisciplinary design and implementation of pragmatic health information technologies (HIT) in diverse healthcare settings. Speakers will present on HIPAA-compliant platforms that support technology design (e.g., mHealth, interactive video modules, chatbots), the benefits of prioritizing user experience design to enhance patient retention and engagement with novel technologies that incorporate ‘privacy by design’ and ‘security by default’ principles, cross-sector and open-source resources supporting technology development, implementation frameworks, compliance and regulatory requirements, and private and public funding mechanisms to support early-stage development. Speakers will navigate the interdisciplinary theories and methods of technology design and frameworks facilitating the integration and evaluation of technologies in clinical environments. For instance, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) allows researchers to examine crucial components of technology design influencing perceived usefulness and ease of use that significantly impact the acceptance and adoption of new technologies among healthcare professionals.

Complementing this, speakers will explore the role of Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) that considers the multifaceted nature of healthcare settings, including inner and outer settings and provider perspectives, to effectively evaluate and refine technology integration. Speakers will also discuss the soft skills necessary to foster multi-stakeholder collaborations and adoption. Lastly, the workshop will provide a comprehensive overview of health technology compliance, the necessity of compliance in respect to patient safety and legal operations, the importance of technology development that is aligned with FDA and other regulatory frameworks, key regulations and standards (e.g., HIPAA, state, and institutional guidelines), data protection requirements under the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, and best practices pertaining to user rights, data breach notifications, and data privacy standards (e.g., ISO 27001). Additional guidance will be provided on data encryption methods, secure data transmission, data anonymization techniques, access controls and audit trails in ensuring data confidentiality, and the importance of regular security assessments to identify vulnerabilities, including data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) in the product development phase.

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Using Population Claims Data in Substance Use Research: Focus on the T-MSIS Analytic File (WAITLIST)

October 16, 2024, 10:30 AM-12 PM, Palace Hotel

In this interactive workshop, we will discuss the opportunities of conducting substance use services research using the T-MSIS Analytic File (TAF), a national Medicaid administrative dataset released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in recent years. Population claims data, because of its population scope and comprehensive capture of healthcare events, provide an important tool for substance use services and policy research. TAF is an important part of the toolkit and provides critical insights into Medicaid enrollees. However, unique data features and substantial variation across state Medicaid programs in coverage and billing policies, data quality. and measurement issues can present compound challenges for effectively working with claims data. Our workshop builds on the extensive experience of the facilitator team in working with population claims data and is strengthened by our ongoing experience with TAF.

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Part II. Pragmatic Implementation Science: Tools You Can Use to Enhance the Impact of Your Research (WAITLIST)

October 16, 2024, 10:30 AM-12 PM, Palace Hotel

Implementation science focuses on how to get effective interventions into practice; however, there is a lack of feasible, pragmatic tools that intervention researchers or those curious about implementation science can use to increase the likelihood that effective treatments are spread and scaled up in healthcare. Workgroups composed of implementation science experts, addiction and pain management intervention developers, and health services researchers from the NIDA-funded Center for Dissemination and Implementation At Stanford (C-DIAS) and HEAL Data2Action Research Adoption Support Center (RASC) developed a set of pragmatic guides and measures to democratize implementation science concepts and frameworks. These guides and measures focus on five key components of implementation science and are designed to support researchers, and anyone seeking to evaluate or implement a health care innovation. This workshop will explore the resulting suite of D&I based guides and measures, present examples of their use, and invite participants to talk through how they might use the guides and measures in their projects. No implementation science expertise needed! Attendees may choose one or both of this pair of workshops.

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