JoAnn Kirchner, MD

The daughter of a highly decorated WWII Veteran, Dr. Kirchner has conducted implementation science research for over two decades and served as a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) Center or Program Director from 2009 through 2020. She is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. The primary focus of her research has been on developing strategies that support the implementation of evidence-based practices in the primary care setting. She has had the extraordinary opportunity to see clinical delivery models that she evaluated early in her career in efficacy and effectiveness trials become the national standard of care within the VA. These care delivery models are becoming a standard of care in non-VA settings as well. As implementation science became recognized as a critical area of health services research, she was able to further enhance the expansion of primary care based mental health programs by studying their implementation and the effects of using implementation facilitation (IF). IF is currently utilized to implement evidence-based practices in many settings and is particularly well-suited for sites unable to implement programs without assistance. She also served as the senior author for the Expert Recommendations for Implementation Change (ERIC) study. This work has led to some of the most influential implementation science methods work in the past few years. She has extensive experience successfully mentoring early-career investigators in implementation science, as core faculty for the NIMH/NIDA/VA supported Implementation Research Institute (IRI) and the HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health (HIGH) IRI. She is the founding principal investigator for the Implementation Facilitation Learning Hub.