3 - (SYM 32) Developing an Implementation Plan for an Intimate Partner Violence Intervention in Corrections and Community Agencies

Members of our research team co-developed an ACT-based intimate partner violence (IPV) intervention called Achieving Change Through Value Based Behavior (ACTV), which has been shown to be effective at reducing rates of recidivism compared to traditional IPV interventions (e.g., Lawrence, Mazurek & Reardon, 2021). The purpose of this study was to evaluate relevant contextual determinants and collaboratively develop implementation strategies with our community partners with the goal of scaling up and increasing adoption of ACTV in other corrections and community agencies. 

In the first phase of this study, we conducted qualitative interviews with program administrators and agency leadership within two of our partner organizations: a community corrections agency and a community agency offering programming to both IPV perpetrators and survivors. We assessed determinants of implementation using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and used thematic coding to identify CFIR determinants that were described by participants. Results of this phase suggested that determinants related to Inner Setting and Implementation Process (including Culture, Compatibility, Organizational Incentives and Rewards, Available Resources, and Opinion Leaders) had a high impact on the degree to which the agencies were able to adopt and implement ACTV. In the second phase of the study, we used the CFIR-ERIC matching tool to identify potential implementation strategies (defined using the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change, or ERIC, framework) that could target these determinants. We then brought these strategies back to our community partners to discuss our findings and get feedback from them to develop tailored versions of those strategies for each site. The result of the study is a fully developed implementation plan that can now be formally tested with respect to our implementation outcomes of interest (e.g., adoption, fidelity, maintenance). Implications for implementing interventions in corrections settings and building collaborative community partnerships will be discussed.