Tailoring the Implementation Strategy of Strength at Home: An Initial Examination of Clinician and Hospital Outcomes

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently implemented the Strength at Home (SAH) program to prevent and end use of IPV in Veterans. SAH is an evidence-based, trauma-informed, cognitive-behavioral intervention for Veterans who use, or are at risk for using, IPV. A previous pilot evaluation of implementation outcomes at 10 VA hospitals indicated slow hospital and clinician adoption rates. The implementation strategy was then revised to address several barriers to timely implementation including securing institutional support, pre-training preparation, and relationship building. The present study used program evaluation metrics from 27 VA hospitals to examine whether the change in implementation strategy improved adoption of the SAH intervention. Results indicated significantly improved hospital and clinician adoption rates and hospital-time-to adoption, but not clinician time-to-adoption.