Dr. Danielle Parrish
Director of Baylor IMPACT Lab - Houston
Dr. Parrish, Ph.D., M.S.W. is the Director of the Baylor IMPACT Lab - Houston, a professor with the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, and a faculty affiliate with the Health Behavior Research and Training Institute (HBRT) at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Parrish began her career as a mental health clinician working in various public mental health programs as a mental health clinician, including infant mental health, juvenile justice mental health and outpatient mental health with child and family referrals from the child welfare system. Her work with children, adolescents, families and adults led Dr. Parrish to identify the need for more efficient intervention development that more easily translates into real-world settings, is informed by the people served, and that does not overburden clients and their families. She is also passionate about using technology, such as mHealth applications, virtual reality, and Telehealth to make behavioral health interventions more accessible. During her practice as a clinical social worker, Dr. Parrish was also struck by the discrepancy between the growing literature demonstrating the efficacy of certain behavioral health treatments and the lack of their consistent use in practice. To bridge this gap, she also does research on the adoption and implementation of the evidence-based practice process in social work and related fields. She is also particularly interested in Implementation Science, and has co-authored a book titled Practical Implementation in Social Work Practice, published by Oxford University Press.
One line of Dr. Parrish’s intervention research focuses on the development and testing of prevention interventions for adult and adolescent females at risk of substance-exposed pregnancy and HIV/STIs. She has been fortunate to serve as a principal investigator and co-investigator on prevention intervention studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIDA and NIAAA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to reduce the risks of alcohol and drug-exposed pregnancy among women in public health clinics and adolescent females in the juvenile justice system. Dr. Parrish is particularly interested in exploring the potential benefit of brief, bundled prevention approaches that simultaneously target multiple health risks. She is currently M-PI of the CHOICES-TEEN study (1R01DA050670-01A1), which is testing the efficacy of the CHOICES-TEEN intervention in collaboration with the Harris County Juvenile Justice Probation department.
Dr. Parrish also collaborates with SEARCH Homeless Services as a contracted research scientist on various evaluation and research projects focused on improving the lives of homeless or housing insecure populations in Houston. She enjoys being connected to the local community and partnering with an agency interested in implementing and evaluating empirically supported programming. Dr. Parrish is also the evaluator of the HRSA-funded BRIDGE behavioral health training grant at the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, and serves as the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Social Work Education.