Mission of The Penn Collaborative

Mission of the Penn Collaborative

1. Raising the standard of mental healthcare for all, including people in low-resource communities whose access to evidence-based practices (EBPs) is often restricted;
2. Empowering mental health providers to adopt flexible, evidence-based practices and tools, strengthening their ability to help people move toward personalized goals;
3. Partnering with mental healthcare organizations and systems to infuse Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and other EBPs into a sustained, programmatic approach, rather than disparate staff who are silos of their own expertise;
4. Advancing the science of implementation through cutting-edge research, including the development of artificial intelligence and other technology-based tools to scale up access to care; and  
5. Mentorship of the next generation of implementation scientists. 

History of the Penn Collaborative

The Penn Collaborative began with a cornerstone project, the Beck Community Initiative (BCI), which was a vision shared by Dr. Aaron Beck, the Father of Cognitive Therapy, and Dr. Arthur Evans, Former Commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. Together, they imagined a partnership that would move CBT out of the research labs and into regular practice, increasing access to this evidence-based practice for all. Since the BCI was launched in 2007, there has been a worldwide increase in demand for CBT and other EBP implementation, and Penn Collab’s research portfolio has expanded with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and other funding agencies to keep pace with the burgeoning scientific landscape.