Purpose
The purpose of this article is to describe the process used to create the Mental Health Innovation (MHI), a multicomponent implementation strategy that integrates evidence‐based mental health interventions into the Nurse‐Family Partnership (NFP), a national home visiting program delivered by nurses to low‐income mothers.
Organizing construct
The Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework outlines the multistep, stakeholder‐engaged process used to develop the MHI.
Conclusion
Engaging stakeholders provided an in‐depth understanding of NFP infrastructure and the needs of NFP nurses and their clients. This understanding was key to designing a multicomponent implementation strategy to integrate mental health interventions within national and local NFP infrastructure and existing care processes.
Clinical relevance
Application of implementation frameworks such as EPIS provides a guide to integrating evidence‐based interventions in a systematic, intentional, and rigorous manner, which in turn may promote their wide scale use and long‐term sustainability.
American Indian women are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease (CVD) than White or African American women. Inflammatory processes may underlie CVD disparities by gender and race and may be critical to understanding population‐specific drivers and potential buffers. Exposure to environmental air pollutants, especially particulate matter (PM), is known to be an important catalyst in CVD‐associated inflammation. Positive psychological states, associated with low levels of inflammatory gene expression, could serve to moderate the inflammatory response to environmental air pollutants and ultimately lead to better cardiovascular health outcomes. The aim of the ongoing community‐engaged and NIH‐funded study described in this study protocol is to address the racial and gender gaps in CVD mortality by investigating the contextually relevant and culturally important determinants of health among American Indian women. In this paper we describe the procedures used to examine the relationship between environmental air pollutant exposures (PM10‐2.5 and PM
2.5), psychological factors (e.g., depressive symptoms, posttraumatic stress symptoms, eudemonic well‐being, and positive emotions), and cardiovascular‐associated inflammation (hs‐CRP, IL‐6, Amyloid A, CBCs with differentials) in a sample of 150 women 18–50 years of age from the Lumbee Tribe in southeastern North Carolina. We describe lessons learned and strategies used in developing a community‐engaged approach to enhance recruitment of American Indian women in biomedical research. The empirical data and community infrastructure resulting from this study will be foundational in designing and testing future interventions to reduce CVD‐associated morbidity and mortality in American Indian women.
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