Integrated behavioral health (IBH) has become a cornerstone of efforts to improve access, quality, and coordination of care across physical and behavioral health systems. Yet despite decades of progress, implementation of IBH remains inconsistent, and the mechanisms that drive successful integration are still not well understood. Implementation science offers a roadmap for moving the field from innovation to impact, providing systematic methods to identify contextual determinants, test strategies that address them, and evaluate the outcomes that matter most. This commentary outlines the development of implementation science and its growing relevance to IBH, briefly summarizes what is currently known about IBH implementation, and offers guidance for advancing the field through future scholarship in Families, Systems, and Health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Cady Berkel (Mon,) studied this question.