Jennifer Boggs, PhD, MSW
Investigator
Jennifer Boggs, PhD, MSW, is an Investigator at the Institute for Health Research. As a mental health services researcher, Dr. Boggs uses training in qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate both the effectiveness of mental health interventions and implementation factors that determine feasibility within health systems. Dr. Boggs' ongoing work is focused in two main areas: 1) understanding implementation approaches that promote effective adoption of safety planning and lethal means safety interventions within health system settings for suicide prevention and 2) developing, testing, and scaling digital health interventions. She has several publications on digital health programs for persons with chronic medical conditions and mental health disorders. She has also completed work and published on the impact of lethal means counseling and risky medication prescribing patterns for benzodiazepines on suicide outcomes. Dr. Boggs works extensively with collaborators from the NIMH funded Mental Health Research Network.
Dr. Boggs received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Indiana University with a minor in business, a Master of Social Work from the University of Denver with concentrations in animal assisted approaches and marriage and family therapy, and a Doctorate in Health Services Research from the University of Colorado.
Selected Research:
- A Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Trial of Firearm Safety Promotion in Pediatric Primary Care to Decrease Firearm Injury and Mortality in Youth
- Funder: National Institute for Mental Health
- Study End Date: 06/30/2024
- Developing a Medication Safety Planning Intervention for Healthcare Settings to Prevent Intentional Poisoning
- Funder: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
- Study End Date: 09/30/2024
- Developing Tools to Evaluate the Impact of Safety Planning and Lethal Means Assessment on Suicide Outcomes.
- Funder: National Institute for Mental Health
- Study End Date: 05/30/2022
- A Pragmatic Randomized Trial of a Firearm Safe Storage Decision Aid for Adults with Suicide Ideation
- Funder: Kaiser Permanente Firearm Injury Prevention Task Force
- Study End Date: 12/30/2021
- Telehealth: Assessing Services in Kaiser Permanente
- Funder: Kaiser Permanente Community Health
- Study End Date: 12/31/2022
This is a pragmatic cluster randomized trial of medical offices to test implementation strategies and clinical effectiveness of the Firearm Safety Check intervention in pediatric primary care. All pediatricians will receive training and an EHR "nudge" during well-visits to provide firearm safety education. Intervention clinics will receive practice facilitation and we will evaluate whether facilitation increases adoption and effectiveness of Firearm Safety Check.
This 2-year development grant will result in the design of a medication safety plan that is both patient-centered and provider-accepted. Qualitative interviews with patients and providers will inform development of the medication safety plan and implementation strategies that will be used in a small-scale pilot. Intervention development and implementation, as well as evaluation methods developed through this planning work will inform a larger scale study to evaluate the impact of mediation safety planning on suicidal behavior.
The goal of this administrative supplement is developing natural language processing tools to identify safety planning and lethal means assessment in patients with suicide risk across three health systems. These tools will be used in the parent award "An Evaluation of the National Zero Suicide Model across Learning Healthcare Systems" to determine the impact of safety planning and lethal means assessment on suicide outcomes in six health systems.
We will test the impact of a digital decision aid for safe firearm storage, Lock to Live, using a hybrid type II randomized trial. In the first aim we determined the most effective delivery approaches for Lock to Live that resulted in high levels of patient uptake and acceptance. The second aim is a randomized trial of Lock to Live, measuring storage behavior and implementation factors among patients at risk of suicide.
There is considerable optimism that telehealth – especially telephone and video-based visits – can transform care delivery within Kaiser Permanente (KP) and across the United States. We propose to study the quality, efficiency, and value of mental health and wellness services in 6 KP regions: Hawaii, Southern California, Washington, Northwest, Colorado, and Georgia.