Best Practices: The Johnson & Johnson—Dartmouth Community Mental Health Program: Disseminating Evidence-Based Practice

This column describes a private-public-academic collaboration in six states and the District of Columbia designed to provide evidence-based supported employment for persons with psychiatric disabilities by using best practices for program implementation. Dissemination strategies included collaborative state-level administrative oversight, longitudinal training based on established fidelity criteria, outcome-based supervision, problem solving by local experts, and selection of intervention sites on the basis of their motivation to participate. The number of clients served at participating sites increased steadily over 11 quarters, and the proportion of clients competitively employed stayed consistently over 40 percent. The project successfully combined industry's emphasis on outcomes with academia's emphasis on research-based interventions to enhance public services.