Integrated behavioral health treatments: innovations to achieve population impact

Translational Behavioral Medicine is a journal that brings together relevant scholars and practitioners to produce articles of scientific and practical significance in a variety of fields. Here, we published a call for manuscripts detailing the study of innovations in the field of implementation of integrated care in the USA. We present 13 articles, all peer reviewed and all targeting some aspect of integrated care implementation. These articles include medical and community-based settings, as well as interventions that effectively engage peers, family members, and other social systems to support and extend care. The behavioral health conditions of interest include but were not limited to those that carry the greatest population disease burdens: depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse disorders. Examples of cross-cutting issues of high interest include research focused on provider and system barriers to integrated care implementation, interventions to improve the use of innovative treatments, disparities in access to care and quality of treatment, the intersection of behavioral health disorders and complex chronic conditions as it affects regimen adherence, health services organization and quality of care, policy effects, innovative methods using health information and mHealth technologies, and personalized/precision medicine. This introduction briefly summarizes some of the relevant topics and background literature. We close with an eye toward future research activities that will continue to advance the field and offer directions to stimulate new research questions in the area.