Gregory Aarons

Background

About Gregory Aarons

Dr. Aarons is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), faculty in the UCSD/SDSU Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, Director of the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC) and Co-Director of the UC San Diego Dissemination and Implementation Science Center. He is a Clarivate Analytics a top 1% influential researchers in the social sciences every year from 2018-2023. Dr. Aarons' research, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and W.T. Grant Foundation focuses on identifying and improving system, organizational, and individual factors that impact successful implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices and quality of care in health care and public sector practice settings. Dr. Aarons' current grants include a NIDA funded project working with a state level health department and community-based provider organizations to align policy and practice for implementing evidence-based behavioral health care. He is PI of a NIMH funded project developing a measure of evidence-based practice sustainment. He is PI of a W.T. Grant Foundation funded project developing a community academic partnership with a large child welfare system in order to improve the use of research evidence in policy and programming. Dr. Aarons’ work focuses on improving organizational context and training managers and supervisors to become effective leaders, to create a positive implementation climate, and to successfully lead evidence-based practice implementation in their teams and organizations. He works on projects in the United States, Norway, and multiple countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Aarons also provides training in implementation science for the NIH, NIMH, NIDA and the VA and also with Kings College, London. He developed and co-leaders the UC San Diego doctoral course - Dissemination and Implementation Science in Health and the Implementation Science Seminar.