Danielle Parrish, Ph.D., is a professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work and associate director of the Health Behavior Research and Training Institute (HBRT).
Dr. Parrish’s research interests stem from her work as a clinician with youth in public mental health settings, including infant mental health, juvenile justice, and outpatient mental health for youth involved with child welfare. There were clear gaps between what was efficacious and what was being implemented in practice, and a need for more feasible, efficient and culturally responsive interventions for youth and families that experienced barriers to service. To this end, Dr. Parrish’s research agenda focuses on bridging the research-practice gap by developing and testing feasible and efficient behavioral health interventions and improving the implementation of empirically supported interventions. Dr. Parrish has worked as Primary Investigator or Co-Investigator on projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. One current line of research has adapted the CHOICES intervention for adolescent young women and is testing its efficacy with youth involved with the juvenile legal system. CHOICES-TEEN is a four-session intervention delivered using telehealth and a mobile health application to reduce the risk of substance-exposed pregnancy (marijuana and alcohol) and HIV/STI risk. After completing a pilot study of CHOICES-TEEN (NIDA; 1R03DA034099), Dr. Parrish is currently funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to test the efficacy of this intervention in a large, randomized trial (1R01DA050670). She is particularly interested in the development of technology-enhanced interventions to expand behavioral health service access to underserved populations, and the development of substance abuse prevention interventions using the Transtheoretical Model.
Dr. Parrish’s other primary line of research focuses on the dissemination and adoption of evidence-based practice and the application of implementation science. She is a co-author of Practice Implementation in Social Work Practice: A Guide to Engaging in Evidence-Based Practice and a leading scholar and expert on evidence-based practice.
Dr. Parrish received her MSW degree from California State University, Fresno where she was a Division I Track & Field athlete, and a Ph.D. in Social Work from The University of Texas at Austin. She also currently serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Social Work Education, and as a research scientist with SEARCH Homeless Services in Houston, Texas.