A Solution to the 17-Year Science-to-Practice Gap? Clinical-Psychological Scientists and Multidisciplinary Collaborations

Developing and disseminating effective treatments requires collaborative partnerships at every phase of intervention implementation. We discuss how a multidisciplinary team of clinical psychologists, public-health faculty, probation officers, and victim-advocacy organizations developed and implemented a novel acceptance-and-commitment-therapy-based intervention for intimate partner violence. Specifically, we discuss the contributions of each discipline at each stage of intervention development and implementation, highlighting ways in which having a multidisciplinary team was necessary in both shaping the effectiveness of the program and making it workable in a nonclinical setting. We argue that these kinds of multidisciplinary partnerships offer a solution for closing the gap that exists between developing empirically supported treatments and translating them into real-world settings. Finally, we discuss the promise and challenges of working in a multidisciplinary team and the unique ways in which clinical psychologists are positioned to engage in this work.