Research Abstract
Depression is the single largest health care burden in the world, with no other illness accounting for even half
its burden. Recently, the World Bank, WHO, Grand Challenges of Canada, and NIMH highlighted the crippling
economic costs of unaddressed depression and the need to scale up depression care globally. In Vietnam, we
found collaborative care effective and conducted a clustered randomized control trial (RCT) that has shown
large effect sizes for a Multicomponent Collaborative Care Model for Depression (MCCD), in which depression
care was task-shifted to primary care providers in local community health clinics and supported by mobile
psychiatrists. While the benefits of collaborative care for depression are well-established, the most appropriate
and effective implementation strategies for scaling up this model have not been identified. To address this
need, our R01 proposal will build on our team's previous work on the MCCD and leverage current policy
initiatives related to depression care in Vietnam—Grand Challenges of Canada, GCC, funding, which includes
80% matched funds supported by the Vietnamese health care system to support establishing a Center of
Excellence at Danang Psychiatric Hospital and scaling up another NIMH R34 Depression program (LIFE-
DM)—to identify implementation models most likely to lead to successful implementation and sustainment of
effective services in low-resource settings. We will partner with local and national community and government
organizations to conduct an RCT comparing effectiveness of three implementation models: (a) usual
implementation (UI), which typically includes one workshop and toolkit; (b) enhanced supervision (ES;
includes model UI); and (c) community-engaged learning collaborative (CELC; includes ES). According to the
RE-AIM Implementation Evaluation framework, to have a population-level impact, an EBI must be adopted by
providers, reach a large proportion of the targeted patient population, be implemented with fidelity, effectively
improve outcomes, and be maintained after research funds are withdrawn. Thus, we will assess
implementation outcomes at the organizational, provider, and patient levels based on this framework, assess
organizational and provider factors associated with successful implementation, and measure the incremental
cost-effectiveness of each implementation strategy. Doing this can guide policy decisions on best strategies to
support scale-up of collaborative care models for depression and other EBIs. This comprehensive and rigorous
implementation effectiveness study will contribute to our understanding of the added value of using a CELC
strategy over and above the best practice in training (ES), which has not been done even in high-income
countries. This timely evaluation of an depression care task-shifting will provide much needed knowledge
about what implementation strategies and factors promote adoption, delivery, and sustainment of high-quality
depression care in low-resource settings where limited mental health human resources are available, thus
addressing global priority knowledge gaps in implementation science and mental health research.