HOT OFF THE PRESS: Our 2021 Annual Report is Now Available

We are continually grateful to the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH) for its ongoing support of the UMass Chan Medical School, Department of Psychiatry DMH Research Center of Excellence—the Implementation Science and Practice Advances Research Center (iSPARC). In FY21, we continued to leverage DMH’s investment to rapidly translate research findings into best practices for individuals with lived experience, their families, and the providers who serve them across the Commonwealth. These successes were maintained throughout a particularly challenging year—one in which iSPARC staff and faculty spent the entire fiscal year working on a primarily remote basis. This year has been a critical lesson for iSPARC in how to effectively “work together, apart.”

This past year has seen major advancements in how we practice community engagement via virtual platforms and has highlighted the increase in access that these platforms create for many individuals with lived experience across the Commonwealth. Our goal is to continue to leverage these platforms beyond the scope of the pandemic to retain these recent gains in our accessibility to the Massachusetts mental health community.

To learn more about the work we’ve done over the past year:

Read our 2021 Annual report: “Working Together, Apart”

View the presentations from the Annual Massachusetts DMH Research Centers of Excellence Conference: “How Stakeholder Engaged Research Can Change Care Provision and Policy: An Inside Look at the Centers of Excellence”