Each year, one in nine people experience an episode of anxiety disorder. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is the most consistently efficacious psychological treatment for anxiety disorders, but it is not widely available in our health care system. Transdiagnostic group CBT (tCBT) is an innovation that has great implementation potential in community-based care in Quebec, as it is well adapted to available resources and to primary care patients’ clinical profile. The clinical effectiveness of this psychotherapy protocol has been demonstrated in clinical trials conducted in specialized clinics, and our research team conducted a pragmatic clinical trial which established the effectiveness of tCBT in the real-world contexts of three CISSS and CIUSSS in Quebec.

This project now aims to demonstrate that this proven organizational and clinical innovation can be implemented in the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS, and lead to an extended transfer, i.e., the seventh stage of an innovation’s maturity level. In order to make tCBT accessible to all people with anxiety disorders who could benefit from it, we propose a hybrid implementation-evaluation study that will allow to demonstrate the potential for dissemination and implementation of this evidence-based psychotherapy at the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS, and to evaluate this innovation’s degree of integration and its effects in actual clinical and organizational contexts. Upon completion, this implementation strategy will be deployable to other CISSS and CIUSSS in Quebec.