Aaron Lyon, PhD
Personal Statement
My research focuses on increasing the accessibility, efficiency, and effectiveness of community- and school-based interventions for children, adolescents, and families. I am particularly interested in (1) the identification and implementation of low-cost, high-yield practices – such as the use of measurement-based care – to reduce the gap between typical and optimal practice in schools; (2) development of individual- and organization-level implementation strategies to promote adoption and sustainment of evidence-based psychosocial interventions within a multi-tier systems of support (MTSS) framework; and (3) human-centered design (and redesign) of psychosocial and digital technologies to improve their implementability, accessibility, and effectiveness. I am the founder and Director of the School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center, dually housed in UW’s School of Medicine and College of Education.
Education
PhD: Clinical Psychology, DePaul University, Chicago
Residency: Clinical Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle
Fellowship: Mental Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle
Department Affiliations
Centers/Programs
Training Programs
Research Institute for Implementation Science in Education (RIISE)
Scholarly Expertise
Clinical Expertise
- Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools – Teachers (BASIS-T)
- Testing the efficacy of the Helping Educational Leaders Mobilize Evidence (HELM) implementation strategy
- PHSKC School Based Health Services
- PHSKC Planning and Evaluation
- State Implementation and Scaling-up of Evidence-based Practices (SISEP) Center
- Parent and teacher engagement as an undervalued implementation determinant
- Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools
- A Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Trial of a School-based Teen Marijuana Check-Up
- Exploring mechanisms of change in a pilot trial of the RUBI Program in educational settings
- Initial efficacy trial of a group-based implementation strategy designed to increase teacher delivery of evidence-based prevention programs
- Beliefs and Attitudes for Successful Implementation in Schools (BASIS)
- A Research Institute for Implementation Science in Education (RIISE) to address the “Last Mile” in education
- Helping Educational Leadership Mobilize Evidence (HELM): an organizational intervention to promote strategic implementation in schools
- Disseminating a user-friendly guide: Advancing the science of intervention adaptation and improving access to evidence-based psychological treatment
- mHealth Washington
Recent Publications
(2025 Sep 29)
Sch Psychol
Splett JW, Gage NA, Chaparro EA, Lyon AR, Sonsteng-Person MA, Alfonso ZZ, Halliday CA
(2024 Dec)
School Ment Health 16(4): 1013-1037
Lyon AR, Connors EH, Lawson GM, Nadeem E, Owens JS
(2024 Sep)
School Ment Health 16(3): 930-935
Lyon AR
(2025 May 26)
Implement Sci Commun 6(1): 64
Corbin CM, Ehrhart MG, Brown EC, Locke J, Cook CR, Aarons GA, Lyon AR
(2025 May 7)
Implement Sci Commun 6(1): 54
Cohen KA, Bruns E, Lyon A, Raviv T, Becker S, Schleider JL
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