On Wednesday, May 16, Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services Commissioner David T. Jones participated in the IDEA Gala, an event where the University of Pennsylvania’s Your Big Idea Challenge recipients were acknowledged. Launched this past February, the Your Big Idea Challenge was designed to help therapists in community mental health organizations throughout Philadelphia better understand their experiences with using evidence-based practices.
Over the course of several weeks, the Your Big Idea Challenge Committee, led by Commissioner Jones, received, reviewed and rated 66 ideas submitted by therapist throughout the city. From those submissions, a total of 6 were selected to be shared with attendees at the May 16 gala as model ideals to help further the work of behavioral health professionals.
According to program managers, the next and final phase of the work will allow for the creation of a “discrete choice experiment,” in which a variety of stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, administrators, and clinicians) will rank a variety of strategies to increase use of evidence-based practices in their work.