Richard M. Fairbanks
School of Public Health

Phone:

(317) 274-3245

Email:

spgrant@iu.edu

Departments:

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Degrees:

Doctor of Philosophy in Social Intervention, University of Oxford

Master of Science in Evidence-Based Social Intervention, University of Oxford

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Loyola Marymount University

Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University

Resume/CV

Biography

Dr. Sean Grant is an assistant professor in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at the IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. He completed his doctorate in social intervention as a Clarendon Scholar at the Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, University of Oxford. Prior to joining FSPH, he spent several years as a behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corporation, a faculty member at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and an adjunct lecturer at Loyola Marymount University. He is an associate member of the Department of Social Policy & Intervention at the University of Oxford, an adjunct member of the Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center and ExpertLens Team at RAND, a Senior Research Fellow with 3ie, and an Associate Editor of Trials and Systematic Reviews.

Research Interests

Dr. Grant's work aims to advance the credibility of intervention research and its utility for supporting evidence-based policy and practice. He conducts applied research across the behavioral, social, and health sciences, with a primary focus on behavioral health. He has served as a scientific advisor to the World Health Organization, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cochrane US Satellite of the Pregnancy and Childbirth Group, and UK Medical Research Council projects developing guidance for exploratory studies and process evaluations of complex interventions.

Dr. Grant is particularly active in the movement toward open science as a member of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences Catalyst Program, Center for Open Science Ambassador Program, CONSORT-SPI Executive Committee, TOP Statement Working Group, Registered Reports Steering Group, AcademyHealth Paradigm Project Learning Community, and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) working group on complex interventions. He is an inaugural recipient of the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Emerging Researchers in Open Social Science and received a presentation award at the MetaScience 2019 Symposium.

Dr. Grant is grateful for current research support from Arnold Ventures, the Fetzer Franklin Fund, the IU Grand Challenges Initiative, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. His research has been supported previously by the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS), Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), US Department of Defense (DoD), US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), UK College of Policing (CoP), UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), and the Wallace Foundation.

Courses Taught

• PBHL S510: Introduction to Research Methods in Public Health
• PBHL S617: Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
• PBHL S670: Biological Foundations of Public Health

Current Projects

• Increasing Take-Up of TOP by Social Intervention Research Journals (Arnold Ventures)
  The goal of this project is to increase take-up of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines by influential journals in core disciplines of social intervention research. Project activities aim to improve the degree to which journal policies, procedures, and practices facilitate transparent and open social intervention research.
• Opioid Policy Tools and Information Center (OPTIC): Opioid Policy Components (National Institute on Drug Abuse)
  The goal of this project is to develop taxonomies and standardized measures of opioid policy components for researchers and policymakers. Project activities aim to assess the ability to measure policy impact for each of three state opioid policies, based on available scientific evidence and input from expert panels.
• Indiana Addictions Law and Policy Surveillance Project (IU Grand Challenges)
  The goal of this project is to systematically analyze laws and policies of significance to the Indiana and national response to the opioid epidemic. Project activities aim to offer novel policy insights and new data suitable for evaluating the effects of such laws on Hoosier health.

Selected Publications

• Grant, S., Smart, R., & Stein, B. D. (2020). We need a taxonomy of state-level opioid policies. JAMA Health Forum 1(2), e200050. doi: 10.1001/jamahealthforum.2020.0050
• Grant, S., Hunter, S. B., Pedersen, E. R., & Griffin, B. A. (2020). Practical factors determining adolescent substance use treatment settings: Results from four online stakeholder panels. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 109, 34-40. doi: 10.1016/j.jsat.2019.11.007
• Grant, S., & Bouskill , K. (2019). Why institutional review boards should have a role in the open science movement. Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS), 116(43), 21336-21338. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1916420116
• Concannon, T. W., Grant, S., Welch, V., Petkovic, J., Selby, J., Crowe, S., Synnot, A., Greer- Smith, R., Mayo-Wilson, E., Tambor, E., & Tugwell, P. (2019). Practical guidance for involving stakeholders in health research. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 34(3), 458-463. doi: 10.1007/s11606-018-4738-6
• Montgomery, P., Movsisyan, A., Grant, S., Macdonald, G., & Rehfuess, E. (2019). Considerations of complexity in rating certainty of evidence in systematic reviews: A primer on using the GRADE approach in global health. BMJ Global Health, 4, e000848. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2018-000848
• Khodyakov, D., Denger, B., Grant, S., Kinnett, K., Armstrong, C. Martin, A., Peay, H., Coulter, I., & Hazelwood, G. (2019). The RAND/PPMD Patient-Centeredness Method: a novel online approach to engaging patients and their representatives in guideline development. European Journal for Person Centered Healthcare, 7(3), 470-475.
• Grant, S., Mayo-Wilson, E., Montgomery, P., Macdonald, G., Michie, S., Hopewell, S., & Moher, D. (2018). CONSORT-SPI 2018 Explanation and Elaboration: Guidance for reporting social and psychological intervention trials. Trials, 19, 406. doi: 10.1186/s13063-018-2735-z
• Grant, S, Booth, M., & Khodyakov, D. (2018). Lack of pre-registered analysis plans allows unacceptable data mining for and selective reporting of consensus in Delphi studies. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 99, 96-105. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2018.03.007
• Tanner-Smith, E. E., & Grant, S. (2018). Meta-analysis of complex interventions. Annual Review of Public Health, 39, 135-151. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040617-014112
• Grant, S., Mayo-Wilson, E., & Montgomery, P. (2016). Implementing quality improvement for psychosocial interventions. Journal of the American Medical Association, 315(9), 943. doi: 10.1001/jama.2015.17855