A Community-Engaged Process for Adapting a Cardiovascular Health Intervention for Persons with Serious Mental Illness

Introduction People with serious mental illness experience grave disparities in cardiovascular disease risk factors. To promote scale-up of effective cardiovascular disease risk reduction interventions from clinical trials, it is important to involve end-users in adapting interventions to fit the needs of community-based settings. Objective We describe a novel, theory-informed process of garnering community input to adapt IDEAL Goals, an evidence-based intervention for improving cardiovascular disease risk factors in persons with serious mental illness. Setting Outpatient community mental health programs in Maryland and Michigan implementing behavioral health homes, which provide enhanced support to people living with both physical and mental illnesses. Participants Clinicians, frontline staff, and administrators from community mental health organizations and persons with serious mental illness. Methods Our approach to community engagement is based on the Replicating Effective Programs (REP) framework. During the REP preimplementation phase, we used 2 community engagement activities: (1) a “needs assessment” to identify anticipated implementation barriers and facilitators, and (2) “community working groups” to collaboratively engage with end-users in adapting the intervention and implementation strategies. Main Findings We used the Stakeholder Engagement Reporting Questionnaire to describe our processes for conducting a needs assessment, involving site-level surveys (N=26) and individual interviews (N=94), and convening a series of community working groups with clinicians and staff (mean, 24 per meeting) and persons with serious mental illness (mean, 8 per meeting). Conclusions By specifying the nature and extent of our community engagement activities, we aim to contribute to the evidence base of how to better integrate and measure community-engaged processes in the adaptation of evidence-based interventions.