About

Gwendolyn M Lawson, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia within the Department of Psychiatry. She holds a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University (2009), an M.A. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania (2012), and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania (2017). Her clinical expertise includes assessment and intervention for youth externalizing disorders and youth anxiety disorders, with extensive experience working on multidisciplinary teams. Her research interests focus on school mental health and implementation science, contributing to the development of evidence-based practices in educational and clinical settings.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Medicine
• Medical education
• Applied psychology
• Developmental psychology

Selected publications

• Teacher-Delivered Mental Health Interventions: Promises, Challenges, and Recommendations for Future Directions

  Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research · 2025-08-28 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Schools are a key setting where services to support youth mental health can occur, and teachers are important for students' social, emotional and behavioral well-being. Teacher-delivered mental health prevention and intervention programs offer an opportunity to integrate mental health support meaningfully into students' everyday lives, as well as expand the reach and impact of mental health services. This is particularly important given the lack of highly trained mental health providers and the barriers to accessing clinical services. However, teachers are not trained as mental health providers and serve a primarily educational mission, and therefore, there are unique considerations for conceptualizing teachers as individuals who can deliver mental health prevention and intervention programs. The purpose of this paper is to delineate conceptual and practical issues related to utilizing teachers as non-traditional mental health providers including key opportunities and challenges to teacher-delivered mental health interventions. We present four examples of teacher-delivered programs that aim to support student mental health and well-being and use these example programs to illustrate these key opportunities and challenges. We also outline directions for future research, with the ultimate goal of enhancing teachers' skills and improving youth mental health.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Toolkit to Support Teachers’ Use of Behavioral Classroom Interventions: Results from a Randomized Pilot Trial

  School Psychology Review · 2025-11-06

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Teacher-delivered Tier 1 (i.e., whole class) and Tier 2 (i.e., targeted) behavioral classroom interventions are effective in improving student academic and behavioral functioning, but often not delivered as recommended. Implementation strategies, especially strategies that are both feasible and effective, could support teachers in the delivery of these interventions. This pilot randomized controlled trial evaluated the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary evidence of effectiveness of the Positive Behavior Management Toolkit (PBMT) in supporting teacher implementation and student outcomes. The PBMT is a modular implementation resource package to support K-5 teachers in delivering Tier 1 and Tier 2 behavioral interventions. Twenty teachers were randomized to receive either the PBMT or implementation support as usual. Quantitative and qualitative results suggested that the PBMT was highly acceptable, feasible and contextually appropriate. We also collected data on teacher fidelity to behavioral interventions and student outcomes for enrolled focal students with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at baseline and post-intervention. Although the pilot study was underpowered to conduct significance testing, the results suggested the PMBT may be effective in supporting teacher implementation outcomes and were mixed regarding student outcomes.

  PublisherDOI

• Educators’ top concerns about youth mental health: A multimethod brief report.

  School Psychology · 2025-08-11

  article1st authorCorresponding

  K-12 schools are well positioned to address rising mental health challenges among youth, and school and district staff (i.e., "educators") have important perspectives about youth mental health. There is a need for research to identify educators' specific areas of concern about youth mental health, particularly in the postpandemic context. The present study aimed to (a) identify the domains of student mental health that educators perceive as their top concerns and (b) describe how educators characterize their concerns within these domains. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected as part of a needs assessment regarding Tier I (universal prevention) and Tier II (targeted intervention) programming across the 48 public school districts within three counties in southeastern Pennsylvania eligible for a broader school mental health research initiative in these counties. First, 34 school district administrators completed a survey regarding their top priorities for student mental health within their district. Then, 39 district administrators and school staff (i.e., principals, teachers, student services staff) participated in semistructured interviews. We examined quantitative data descriptively and performed a conventional content analysis on qualitative data. Across both quantitative and qualitative results, educators identified anxiety as a top concern. Within this category, interviewees discussed anxiety related to the social and academic pressures of the school environment, performance anxiety, and perfectionism. Additionally, disruptive behavior, dysregulation, peer relationships, and trauma were also identified as top concerns. These results have implications for the selection and prioritization of mental health prevention and intervention programs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Barriers and Facilitators to the Implementation of Prevention and Early Intervention Mental Health Programming in Schools

  School Mental Health · 2025-09-08 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Implementation mapping to plan for the Supraglottic Airway for Resuscitation (SUGAR) trial

  Implementation Science Communications · 2024-11-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: Positive pressure ventilation (PPV) is an essential component of neonatal resuscitation. Meta-analytic evidence suggests that, among late preterm and term newborn infants who require resuscitation after birth, a supraglottic airway (SA) device is more effective than a face mask at reducing the probability of PPV failure and reducing the need for endotracheal intubation. However, SA devices are rarely used in routine practice in hospital delivery room settings within the United States. METHODS: In preparation for a pragmatic hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial, we used implementation mapping to identify barriers and facilitators to SA use; develop a logic model; identify and operationalize implementation strategies targeting key barriers and facilitators; and refine strategies based on iterative feedback from clinicians and administrators (e.g., physicians, nurse practitioners, nurse managers, and respiratory therapists). We used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to organize barriers and implementation strategies. RESULTS: Across open-ended survey responses and focus groups, identified barriers included: (1) mixed perceptions of the advantages or disadvantages of SA compared to alternatives; (2) insufficient education and training in SA use; and (3) lack of perceived need for an alternative to intubation as a standard practice. The research team's understanding of these barriers and selection of implementation strategies to address them were refined throughout the iterative implementation mapping process, which resulted in the selection of two sets of implementation strategies to be tested in a hybrid trial. CONCLUSIONS: The implementation mapping process described in this paper provides an exemplar of a systematic and partner-engaged process to identify and select implementation strategies for the purpose of hybrid trial design.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A mixed-methods evaluation of organization and individual factors influencing provider intentions to use caregiver coaching in community-based early intervention

  Implementation Science Communications · 2024-02-27 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  BACKGROUND: Most psycho-social interventions contain multiple components. Practitioners often vary in their implementation of different intervention components. Caregiver coaching is a multicomponent intervention for young autistic children that is highly effective but poorly implemented in community-based early intervention (EI). Previous research has shown that EI providers' intentions, and the determinants of their intentions, to implement caregiver coaching vary across components. Organizational culture and climate likely influence these psychological determinants of intention by affecting beliefs that underlie attitudes, norms, and self-efficacy to implement an intervention. Research in this area is limited, which limits the development of theoretically driven, multilevel implementation strategies to support multi-component interventions. This mixed methods study evaluated the relationships among organizational leadership, culture and climate, attitudes, norms, self-efficacy, and EI providers' intentions to implement the components of caregiver coaching. METHODS: We surveyed 264 EI providers from 37 agencies regarding their intentions and determinants of intentions to use caregiver coaching. We also asked questions about the organizational culture, climate, and leadership in their agencies related to caregiver coaching. We used multilevel structural equation models to estimate associations among intentions, psychological determinants of intentions (attitudes, descriptive norms, injunctive norms, and self-efficacy), and organizational factors (implementation climate and leadership). We conducted qualitative interviews with 36 providers, stratified by strength of intentions to use coaching. We used mixed-methods analysis to gain an in-depth understanding of the organization and individual-level factors. RESULTS: The associations among intentions, psychological determinants of intentions, and organizational factors varied across core components of caregiver coaching. Qualitative interviews elucidated how providers describe the importance of each component. For example, providers' attitudes toward coaching caregivers and their perceptions of caregivers' expectations for service were particularly salient themes related to their use of caregiver coaching. CONCLUSION: Results highlight the importance of multi-level strategies that strategically target individual intervention components as well as organization-level and individual-level constructs. This approach holds promise for improving the implementation of complex, multicomponent, psychosocial interventions in community-based service systems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Helping Practitioners Stop, Drop, and Roll: Suggestions to Help Improve Responses to Intense Clinical Events

  Psychiatric Services · 2024-02-27 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Community practitioners inconsistently implement evidence-based interventions. Implementation science emphasizes the importance of some practitioner characteristics, such as motivation, but factors such as practitioners' emotion regulation and cognitive processing receive less attention. Practitioners often operate in stressful environments that differ from those in which they received training. They may underestimate the impact of their emotional state on their ability to deliver evidence-based interventions. This "hot-cold state empathy gap" is not well studied in mental health care. In this Open Forum, the authors describe scenarios where this gap is affecting practitioners' ability to implement evidence-based practices. The authors provide suggestions to help practitioners plan for stressful situations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Community-Partnered Research Process for Implementation Strategy Design: Developing Resources to Support Behavioral Classroom Interventions

  School Mental Health · 2024-06-18 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Schools need effective, sustainable implementation strategies to support teachers in using effective Tier 1 (i.e., whole class) and Tier 2 (i.e., targeted) behavioral interventions in the classroom. This paper describes an iterative, community-partnered process of developing implementation resources to support teachers in using Tier 1 and 2 positive behavior management interventions; we call these resources the Positive Behavior Management Toolkit (PBMT). There were two key aspects to the iterative development process: 1) working with a Program Development Team of district—and school-employed partners to identify priorities, interpret data, provide feedback on resources, and plan for sustainment; and 2) conducting a series of tryouts in which teachers used a version of the PBMT in their classrooms and provided quantitative and qualitative feedback on acceptability, appropriateness, feasibility, and recommendations for improvement. In partnership with the Program Development Team, we used data from the tryouts to inform revisions to the PBMT. This paper presents quantitative and qualitative data from the tryouts and describes how these data informed revisions to the PBMT. We also describe the processes by which we engaged the team, considerations related to contextual appropriateness, and lessons learned related to community-engaged intervention development research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Strengthening relationships with students with ADHD symptomology: A qualitative study about teacher perspectives

  Teaching and Teacher Education · 2024-11-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• School‐Based Mental Health Interventions: Recommendations for Selecting and Reporting Implementation Strategies*

  Journal of School Health · 2024-04-16 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A key component of student health and well-being is mental health. The rates of diagnosable mental health concerns among students are high—the lifetime prevalence for at least 1 mental health disorder was nearly 50% in a large, nationally representative sample of adolescents from 2010,1 and prevalence has increased among school-age children and adolescents in recent years.2 Notably, only about half of youth with mental health concerns receive treatment,3, 4 and rates of treatment receipt are lower among marginalized or low-income youth.3, 5 When children and adolescents do receive mental health treatment, they frequently access these services through their preK-12 schools.6-8 Compared to clinic-based settings, schools offer many advantages for mental health service provision, including promoting access to care and reducing stigma9 particularly within under-resourced settings.10 Unfortunately, there are significant implementation challenges to the uptake and delivery, as well as the study, of mental health services within schools. The primary mission of schools is academic education, and many schools, particularly those serving marginalized or low-income students, frequently lack the resources to achieve their academic mission. As a result, there are often limited resources left to deliver mental health services, especially if they are not directly aligned with the schools' academic mission.9 Furthermore, school-based mental health practitioners face multilevel barriers when implementing interventions, including characteristics about the intervention itself (eg, usability, contextual fit), the individual (eg, stress and burnout), the team (eg, turnover), and the school (eg, funding for sustainability), as well as factors related to the macro-level community (eg, service fragmentation).11, 12 Applying concepts from the field of implementation science, the scientific study of strategies to facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practices into real-world service delivery,13 has the potential to benefit school mental health research and practice. One way to support successful uptake is to develop and test implementation strategies (ie, the techniques used to enhance the adoption, implementation, or sustainment of interventions), which are key to ensure that school mental health interventions are implemented as intended within schools. The School Implementation Strategies Translating ERIC (ie, Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change) Resources (SISTER) is a compilation of 75 implementation strategies14 for the school context. SISTER provides a taxonomy of strategies (eg, provide consultation/coaching; monitor the implementation effort) to help researchers and school partners select strategies to support evidence-based practices in schools. In implementation science, over 140 theories, models, and frameworks have been developed,15 including those that specify implementation barriers and facilitators, evaluation outcomes, or steps in the implementation process, among other purposes.16 The EPIS framework17 may be particularly relevant for school-based researchers and practitioners because it addresses the key phases (ie, explore, prepare, implement, sustain) that guide the implementation process (ie, steps in translating research to practice). In the Exploration phase, researchers and practitioners use implementation strategies to consider the emerging or existing needs of the school (eg, students', teachers' or other personnel needs), as well as evaluate the potential fit between the intervention and school. During the Preparation phase, it is important to plan for implementation by capitalizing on implementation facilitators and addressing potential barriers to implementation. During the Implementation phase, researchers and practitioners apply implementation strategies and monitor the implementation process. During the Sustainment phase, the structures and processes in schools are considered that would support ongoing implementation.17 The EPIS framework is particularly well-suited for school mental health research and practice because it highlights constructs at the level of the intervention itself (eg, usability, adaptability), the level of the inner context (ie, individual factors such as attitudes about the intervention, and organizational factors such as culture and climate), the level of the outer context (ie, factors such as policies, legislation, and funding), as well as factors that span the inner and outer context (ie, “bridging factors,” such as community-academic partnerships). In this commentary, we draw on the EPIS framework17 to argue that the school mental health field would benefit from explicit consideration of implementation strategies across EPIS phases. Implementation strategies (eg, professional development trainings, coaching) are frequently used in schools to support the delivery of mental health interventions, and therefore, there is growing interest in applying implementation science concepts to school mental health.12, 18, 19 We respond to this call to systematically infuse school mental health service research with critical concepts from implementation science. We make 3 specific recommendations for selecting and reporting implementation strategies to advance school mental health research and practice. First, we urge school mental health researchers and practitioners to recognize the crucial roles of the Exploration and Preparation phases for implementation success. Specifically, we argue that researchers and practitioners should intentionally use and report implementation strategies at these phases. It is imperative that the development of implementation strategies, especially early in the implementation process (ie, Exploration), occurs in close collaboration with community partners who are attuned to the school's emerging or existing needs and contextual fit, as well as barriers and facilitators to the implementation of school-based mental health interventions. For example, researchers and school partners can collaborate to select interventions and implementation strategies that address school priorities and fit within existing structures (eg, schoolwide frameworks, professional development schedules). An example implementation strategy relevant to the Exploration and Preparation phases is to collaboratively develop a needs assessment (eg, with input from parents, teachers, related service providers, administrators, and researchers) to “assess for readiness and identify barriers and facilitators” (which falls under the Evaluative and Iterative Strategies category in SISTER) for the specific prevention or intervention program under consideration. The collaborative interpretation of the needs assessment can inform the co-selection of prevention and/or intervention programs, as well as implementation strategies to support these programs. For example, identifying specific implementation barriers and facilitators during a needs assessment can inform the selection of implementation strategies that address barriers and capitalize on facilitators (eg, training or educational materials to address knowledge barriers; identifying champions to facilitate social influence). Additionally, pre-implementation enhancement strategies20, 21 are particularly relevant for the Preparation phase. Pre-implementation enhancement strategies are delivered prior to the active implementation phase, with the goal of enhancing the impact of implementation-phase strategies. For example, the Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools (BASIS20) is a brief pre-implementation strategy, designed to target individual-level barriers to behavior change (eg, attitudes) among school mental health clinicians. BASIS is provided prior to the delivery of implementation-phase strategies, such as training and consultation, with the goal of enhancing clinicians' engagement in training and consultation.20 Similar pre-implementation strategies have also been developed for teachers.21, 22 These kinds of pre-implementation strategies are an important example of how implementation strategies can be applied at the Preparation phase to increase motivation to engage in implementation. We argue that an explicit emphasis on applying implementation strategies during initial phases of the implementation process will help set up school-based mental health programming for success. Second, we argue that researchers and their school partners should consider implementation strategies in addition to time- and resource-intensive training and coaching at the Implementation phase. Most of the strategies reported in the extant school mental health literature about the Implementation phase involve intensive (ie, 2 hours to 4 days in length) training and/or ongoing consultation or coaching.23-27 Although there is evidence that the combination of training and coaching or consultation can be effective to support implementation,23, 28 these strategies may not always be feasible or sustainable in school settings where time and funding are constrained, and they do not always directly address the most salient implementation barriers. It is important to additionally consider a broader set of implementation strategies at the Implementation phase. The SISTER compilation highlights strategies appropriate for the Implementation phase in addition to training, consultation, or coaching. For example, the category Change Infrastructure includes strategies such as “change accreditation or membership requirements,” “change/alter environment,” “change record systems,” and “prune competing initiatives.” Moreover, SISTER strategies such as “develop educational materials” and “distribute educational materials” were rated by experts as high in importance and feasibility in school settings,29 suggesting that school mental health research may benefit from adding to the implementation strategies that are used at the Implementation phase. Indeed, leaders in contemporary implementation science have recently argued that the field risks recreating the “research-to-practice gap” by using strategies that are time intensive and ultimately not feasible in practice settings, even if they are effective.30 School mental health researchers and practitioners can avoid this potential pitfall by considering a broad array of strategies at the Implementation phase, identifying and selecting them with key partners, including school personnel who are experts in contextual fit and feasibility,30 and prioritizing pragmatic research.31 Third, we argue for employing and reporting implementation strategies to plan for Sustainment. Currently, there is very little in the extant school mental health literature regarding implementation strategies at the Sustainment phase. This is a critical gap in the field, and we recommend a 2-prong approach to address sustainment. First, we suggest planning for sustainment across the prior EPIS phases (ie, Exploration, Preparation, Implementation) by considering the sustainability of interventions, as well as strategies to support sustainment, throughout the implementation process. Second, it is imperative to explicitly consider and report implementation strategies for the Sustainment phase. In reporting implementation strategies, researchers should follow established guidelines for naming, defining, and specifying implementation strategies.32 For example, 1 strategy under the Adapt and Tailor to Context category in SISTER14 is to “test-drive and select practices” which involves supporting staff to try out various practices in small doses (eg, at the Implementation phase) and then having them select the ones (ie, at the Sustainment phase) that they find the most feasible and acceptable in the school context. School mental health researchers who use this strategy can report key details to operationalize the strategy (eg, who delivers, dosage, temporality) at both the Implementation and Sustainment phase. For sustainment and scale-up, it is important to focus on the practices that are identified as feasible and acceptable through partnerships, such as community-based participatory approaches. Given the lack of consideration for sustainment, especially early in the implementation process, researchers and practitioners are consistently faced with the problem of re-implementation—that is, implementing the same prevention or intervention program again in the same context.33 However, it is important to acknowledge that it can be particularly difficult to plan for sustainability in schools given its inherent challenges, such as high staff turnover, students advancing grades, incoming students mid-year, and families leaving the district.34 Some of these challenges have been addressed in other fields by focusing on organizational implementation. For example, Adam et al.35 examined the implementation of a “cultural change toolkit” to reduce burnout and mitigate turnover with nurses in the emergency department.35 A similar approach may be applicable in schools. In this commentary, we draw on the EPIS framework to argue for the importance of considering and reporting implementation strategies that support school mental health prevention and intervention programs. Specifically, we argue for the need to consider the Exploration and Preparation phases; the importance of Implementation strategies in addition to intensive training and consultation; and the need to focus on Sustainment. We suggest that applying concepts from the field of implementation science, such as the EPIS framework and the SISTER compilation of implementation strategies, has the potential to advance school mental health research and practice, at a time when this is sorely needed to enhance student health. Future work on the implementation of school health programs may also benefit from explicitly considering EPIS constructs, such as the inner context, outer context, and bridging factors. Our recommendations also highlight the critical role of authentic community partnerships and participatory research (ie, shared decision-making, iterative nature of intervention development and implementation, and including partner priorities).36 Indeed, the practice-based expertise of school practitioners are critical in developing and selecting interventions and implementation strategies that are appropriate and feasible across EPIS phases. Moreover, engagement between schools and community organizations, including researchers, is a critical component of overall school health promotion efforts, such as the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model.37, 38 The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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Frequent coauthors

• David S. Mandell

  May Institute

  19 shared

• Martha J. Farah

  University of Pennsylvania

  14 shared

• Ricardo Eiraldi

  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  13 shared

• Rinad S. Beidas

  Northwestern University

  11 shared

• Heather J. Nuske

  Penn Center for AIDS Research

  10 shared

• E Haimes

  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  9 shared

• Kelly B. Beck

  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  9 shared

• Julie Sarno Owens

  Ohio University

  7 shared

Labs

• Gwendolyn M Lawson LabPI