Activities and projects
We are working to unite relationship science and healthcare in meaningful ways. Here are snapshots of our activities.​​
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Projects
The Mirah evaluation: A national dissemination and implementation of collaborative behavioral health in primary care
Note: under consideration about whether this is a BRANCH project or TUSM project
As many as 20% to 40% of patient visits to US primary care clinicians are for mental health conditions such as major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and other psychosis, attention deficit, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Historically, the capacity to consult and refer to mental health clinicians has been severely limited. The model of
collaborative and integrative behavioral health embedded into primary care dramatically helps overcome these barriers as well as increase primary care capacity and expertise in the diagnosis and management of mental health conditions.
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More than 90 randomized clinical trials collectively demonstrate the efficacy and effectiveness of this model whereby behavioral health managers, therapists, and consulting psychiatrists work side by side with primary care clinicians to screen, diagnose, and manage these patients. Given the severe shortage of mental health clinicians, this model is a powerful potential solution to the growing mental health needs in the US, especially following the disruption of lives caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the overwhelming evidence of effectiveness and increased funding, this model has met many barriers to widespread implementation in US primary care practices.
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The Accelerate the Future foundation, which is funding this initiative, has as its mission to disseminate and implement this model nationwide. The foundation is supporting both the Mirah initiative and BRANCH investigators to continuously evaluate and facilitate this effort using mixed methodologies across the fields of implementation science and relationship science. Mirah provides a measurement-based digital platform designed to assist healthcare providers in screening, monitoring, and managing mental health conditions in primary care settings. The firm also employs experienced therapists who assist primary care practices with recruiting behavioral health coordinators, therapists, and a consulting psychiatrist.​ Successful implementation of team-based collaborative behavioral healthcare in primary care greatly enhances the capacity to meet patients’ needs and enables clinicians to listen carefully, develop trust, and provide effective treatment while experiencing professional satisfaction, which is core to the mission of the BRANCH initiative.
Purposeful AI chatbots that connect relationship science and primary healthcare
Ashley Duggan is working with a group of leaders, including Tim Lindgren in the Center for Digital Innovation and Learning at Boston College, to draw on the university’s mission to help students not only develop academically, but also to find purpose and meaning in their lives. The group is creating and piloting custom chatbots with the intent that AI technology can be designed to uphold and encourage values of the common good. Ashley’s focus is writing and testing chatbots that connect relationship science and primary healthcare while being consistent with the core formative values of primary care. These projects also consider the ethical dimensions of what is inherently human and the implications of technology on learning, work, and culture. Croia Loughnane is part of the evaluation team of the chatbot pilot project.
Book: A Way Forward in Primary Care: Making Healing Work
This book in progress offers intellectual and practical foundations to envision a way forward in primary care, which is essentially to return the “care” to healthcare. We look at how primary care clinicians in training as well as those in practice can refocus their ways of working to build trusting, close relationships with patients while working within the constraints of our current healthcare environment.
Mapping Out Foundations of Relationship Science
Ashley Duggan and Norah Dunbar and Laura Miller are working on multiple projects and activities to map out the foundations of relationship science and the positive impact of relationship science. These intellectual and impact-focused projects articulate social and personal relationship processes and tools from a scientific perspective.
Getting back to the heart of primary care: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted healthcare systems and brought into sharp focus that relationships are at the heart of what matters in healthcare. The pandemic also offered a unique opportunity to take the pulse of primary care from different perspectives, including patients and clinicians. We are working with primary care leaders at the Larry A. Green Center on analyzing and writing from their series of surveys fielded during the COVID-19 pandemic to connect relationship science with primary care and to identify lessons learned and hopeful paths forward.​​
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Our first analysis, a qualitative study of patient experiences with their primary care clinicians, is under final editorial review for inclusion as a chapter in a book addressing primary care during the pandemic. A second study underway looks at trust related to vaccines, and a study in the planning phase will examine the experience of clinicians working in direct primary care practices during the pandemic.
Activities
Tapping into the “think-tank” model of building
We recognize that transforming healthcare requires innovative and possibly disruptive solutions. A key aspect of BRANCH is bringing together thought leaders from diverse disciplines to generate ideas and ultimately solve problems that get in the way of the delivery of compassionate, empathetic healthcare.
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BRANCH leadership has engaged in informal think tank events at organized retreats, presentations, international conferences, and pre- and postconference meetings. These discussions ranged from one hour to multiple days in length and involved as few as three people and as many as a dozen. The outcomes include decision making, written documents, or presentations.
Bernard Ewigman, Ashley Duggan, Rebecca Etz, and Allen Shaughnessy
Think tanks have been instrumental in the development of BRANCH and will continue to be a vital activity. A think tank held in 2023 resulted in the decision to brand the initiative that became BRANCH. Subsequently, a think tank in 2024 led to a well-articulated description of nine chapters for a forthcoming book, A Way Forward in Primary Care: Making Healing Work, which will serve as one of the core intellectual foundations for the BRANCH initiative. This book is currently being edited by Ashley Duggan and Andrea Vicini, SJ.
IARR International Conference Boston 2024
The BRANCH team delivered presentations and posters at the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR) July 2024 conference in Boston, generating interest in the initiative and identifying potential collaborators.
As local host for the conference, Ashley Duggan and her local host and academic planning teams assembled five days of events for this biennial international main conference attended by scholars of social and personal relationships from around the globe.
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IARR is an interdisciplinary organization that advances in the scientific study of personal and social relationships, and encourages collaboration among students, new scholars, and experienced scholars. IARR members represent a broad range of disciplines, such as family studies, psychology, communication, sociology, child/lifespan development, gerontology, education, clinical work (e.g., counseling, therapy), philosophy, and anthropology.
Hosted by Ashley Duggan, IARR Boston 2024 welcomed the BRANCH team including Marie Haverfield, Laura Miller, Bernard Ewigman, and (not pictured here) Wayne Altman.
Partnerships in health communication: Research, teaching, and policy
BRANCH is building a set of resources for health communication scholars engaged with or interested in partnership building with practitioners, public health advocates, health communication researchers and teachers, health administrators, community leaders, students, patients, and caregivers. This effort is intended to advance the study and implementation of effective, partnership-driven healthcare communication approaches.
Presentation on foundational BRANCH initiative concepts at the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare (ICCH 2024) in Zaragoza, Spain.
Building capacity for successful partnerships: Connecting organizations and people
​The BRANCH team is matching health communication and relationship science scholars, teachers, and policymakers with local community health organizations, national healthcare networks, and colleagues leading international healthcare initiatives. Our work conveys the challenges and successes of partnerships to increase shared understanding locally, nationally, and globally.
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Presentation on building successful partnerships for impact. Presented at the International Communication Association June 2025 as part of the ICA/EACH partnership
Exploring new technologies to support the health and well-being of underserved Irish communities
This project aims to learn how to create custom AI chatbots that are meaningful and purposeful and explore if this is a feasible solution for providing scalable health and well-being support. The project is situated within Ashley's Purposeful AI working group at Boston College. The project addresses the codesign and pilot of an AI chatbot to connect relationship science and primary care with Boston College student learning. Foundations learned will be used to develop purposeful AI solutions for community health and well-being in partnership with health coaches and members of an Irish community. This project is a collaboration between Ashley Duggan-- and Croía Loughnane and Pádraic Dunne at RCSI Dublin.
Connecting Relationship Science and Human Communication Research with Positive Health Sciences. Following her Fulbright Fellowship, Ashley continues to build BRANCH in both the content area in connecting relationship science and human communication with positive health sciences as well as the relationships with colleagues from the Centre for Positive Health Sciences at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicine and Health Sciences. Positive health sciences provides a theoretical foundation for integrating medical and psychological approaches to health and wellbeing. Rooted in positive psychology, lifestyle medicine, health psychology, and coaching psychology, this interdisciplinary field integrates medical and psychological approaches to promote a dynamic and comprehensive journey toward positive health.
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Positive Health Sciences highlights the necessary interplay between health psychology’s conceptual understanding of behaviour changes and health belief, positive psychology’s promotion of eudemonic and hedonic well-being for flourishing, lifestyle medicine’s evidence-based strategies, and individuals; internal mechanisms of change for fostering healthier lifestyles and reducing chronic disease risk. Together, they form a comprehensive framework of holistic positive health. Building on these theories, Positive Health Sciences integrates medical and psychological approaches to health and wellbeing.
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By uniting the “mind” and the “body,” Positive Health Sciences enable professionals to view individuals as whole persons rather than fragmented parts. This field incorporates various evidence-based interventions to foster both eudemonic (realizing personal potential) and hedonic (pleasure and satisfaction) well-being, along with physiological indicators of health (i.e. cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and immunological parameters) and lifestyle factors (adequate sleep, regular physical activity, healthy eating, stress management, minimizing alcohol and tobacco, as well as cultivating positive social and personal relationships) that are essential for optimal human functioning.