The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has awarded Howard Dubowitz, MD, MS, FAAP a 5-year grant to study the dissemination, adoption, implementation and sustainability of the SEEK approach in primary care practices in the US. This involves implementation science, a field focused on understanding the barriers to and facilitators of integrating promising innovations into healthcare. In a hybrid design, the study is also examining the effectiveness of SEEK in helping prevent child abuse and neglect.

More specifically, the National SEEK study is comparing two training strategies increasingly common in medical education: independent online training vs. a Quality Improvement activity guided by the developer of SEEK. The study also includes probing the use of SEEK software to facilitate implementation as well as the traditional ‘paper and pencil” approach. Finally, we plan to examine the costs associated with these different strategies.

This article describes the National SEEK Study in more detail.