The Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association has appointed nine psychologists to serve on a new APA Advisory Steering Committee for Development of Clinical Treatment Guidelines.  This committee will play a leading role in organizing and overseeing the process by which APA will, for the first time, develop clinical treatment guidelines for psychologists.  The newly appointed members are:

Steven D. Hollon (Chair)
Vanderbilt University

Patricia A. Areán
University of California, San Francisco

Michelle G. Craske
University of California, Los Angeles

Kermit A. Crawford
Boston University School of Medicine

Daniel R. Kivlahan
Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System

Jeffrey J. Magnavita
Glastonbury Psychological Associates 
 
Thomas H. Ollendick
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Thomas L. Sexton
Indiana University

Bonnie Spring
Northwestern University

More than fifty nominations were submitted in response to a call for nominations issued in April.  The Board of Directors received advice on its selections from the Board of Scientific Affairs, Board of Professional Affairs, and Committee for the Advancement of Professional Practice. 

The new committee will have primary responsibility for establishing the scope and format of APA clinical treatment guidelines, identifying disorders and conditions for which treatment guidelines will be developed, selecting members of panels that will write guidelines, and commissioning independent systematic reviews of relevant empirical literature.  It will carry out its work in consultation with the Board of Directors and other APA governance bodies and with staff support from the Science and Practice Directorates.

Although it was originally expected that the committee would have six members, the Board of Directors decided to expand the committee to nine in order to ensure that it included a sufficiently broad range of scientific and clinical expertise.  Each member will serve an initial term of three years (beginning January 1, 2011) and will be eligible for appointment to a second term.  Second terms will vary in length from one to three years in order to allow for staggering of subsequent terms. 

This is APA’s first effort to develop guidelines for treatment of particular disorders and conditions.  It builds on earlier policy statements concerning evidence-based practice (PDF, 125 KB) and the evaluation of treatment guidelines (PDF, 50 KB) developed by other organizations. APA has previously developed practice guidelines, which are distinct from treatment guidelines in that they address the conduct of clinical practice with particular populations or in particular settings but are not disorder- or treatment-specific. 

Questions about APA's development of treatment guidelines can be directed to Howard Kurtzman, Deputy Executive Director for Science.