Dr. Aarons is a clinical and organizational psychologist, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego; director of the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center; co-director of the UC San Diego Dissemination and Implementation Science Center; and co-director of the IN-STEP Team Effectiveness for Children’s Mental Health Center. He also serves as co-editor-in-chief of the journal Implementation Science.

He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications with more than 46,000 citations and an h-index of 86. From 2018 to 2023, he has consistently ranked in the top 1% of Clarivate’s most influential researchers in the social sciences.

Dr. Aarons developed the Evidence-Based Practice Attitude Scale, the Implementation Leadership Scale and other widely used implementation science measures. He also co-developed the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework and the Leadership and Organizational Change for Implementation (LOCI) strategy.

His research—funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (including the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Fogarty International Center), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the William T. Grant Foundation—focuses on designing and testing implementation strategies to improve outer-context system factors and inner-context organizational and individual factors that enhance the implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices and quality care in health and allied health settings in the United States, sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, Norway and Mexico.