Dr. Aarons is a clinical and organizational psychologist, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego (UCSD), a faculty member in the UCSD/SDSU Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, Co-Director of the UCSD Dissemination and Implementation Science Center (DISC), and Director of the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC).  For the past 20 years, Dr. Aarons’ research, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIMH and NIDA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC), has focused on implementation science with emphases on conceptual frameworks, implementation strategies, scale-up strategies, pragmatic measure development, study design, management and organizational issues, and evidence-based practice implementation in public sector substance abuse treatment, mental health, HIV prevention, and social services settings in the US, Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe. His research has developed implementation conceptual frameworks (e.g., the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment Framework), measures of individual and organizational factors that influence implementation (e.g., Evidence-Based Practice Attitudes Scale, Implementation Climate Scale), and developed and tested implementation strategies (e.g., the Leadership and Organizational Change Intervention).  His research has developed implementation conceptual frameworks (e.g., the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment [i.e., EPIS] framework), measures of individual and organizational factors that influence implementation (e.g., Evidence-Based Practice Attitudes Scale, Implementation Leadership Scale, Implementation Climate Scale), and developed and tested implementation strategies (e.g., the Leadership and Organizational Change Intervention [LOCI]; Interagency Collaborative Team [ICT] strategy). The LOCI intervention is designed to promote the implementation of evidence-based practice by facilitating more effective implementation leadership, and he is currently testing it in a NIDA-funded cluster randomized controlled trial in public sector treatment programs in two states (R01DA038466) and in community behavioral health in three other states (R01MH119127) and in low-and middle income countries (R01MH113722).