Christopher R. Larrison
Associate Professor
Office location: 338 SSW
Phone number:217-419-3145
Email: larrison@uiuc.edu
Educational Background
Christopher R. Larrison earned a B.S. degree from Cornell University (1988), and a MSW (1996) and Ph.D. (1999) from the University of Georgia. He has over 10 years of professional and research experience with community mental health agencies.
Research and Practice Interests
Dr. Larrison is interested in community based service agencies and how they interact with clients and policies to create outcomes for clients. Employing primary data, he has studied community based mental health services in the U.S., community development in rural Mexico, and the impact of welfare reform in Georgia. His use of field research techniques has led to extensive experience in training and supervising research staff, collecting and analyzing primary data, and using mixed methods. He has concentrated on two sets of factors related to community based service outcomes: 1) Client-level factors with a particular consideration to socioeconomic status, gender, level of health, and race, culture and ethnicity; and 2) agency-level factors with a particular consideration to program model, level of innovation, and organizational climate. Several of Dr. Larrison’s peer reviewed articles have been placed on suggested reading lists by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Government Accounting Office, and The World Bank.
Current Research
Dr. Larrison is currently the PI for a three year NIMH funded field project that is examining the relationship between organizational climate and treatment outcomes for African American adults receiving services at 12 community mental health agencies in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (1R34 MH074640-02A, Climate, diversity, and outcomes in rural mental health). Link to recent radio interview with Dr. Larrison about community mental health services in the U.S.: http://www.will.uiuc.edu/AM/focus/archives/07/070507.htm
Recent Publications
Larrison, C.R., Schoppelrey, S.L., Hadley-Ives, E., & Ackerson, B.J. (in press). Organizational climate and treatment outcomes for African American clients receiving services at community mental health agencies. Administration in Social Work.
Larrison, C.R. & Hadley-Ives, E. (2007). Examining the role of gender in community development. Social Development Issues.
Larrison, C.R. & Sullivan, M. (Eds.) (2006) Welfare reform impacts: Balancing safety nets and behavior modification. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, Inc.
Larrison, C.R., Schoppelrey, S.L., Brantley, J.F., Leonard, M., Crooke, D., Barrett, D., McCollum, A. & Nowak, M.G. (2004). Evaluating treatment outcomes for African American and White clients receiving treatment at a community mental health agency in the rural South. Research on Social Work Practice, 14, 137-146.
Larrison, C.R. (2002). A comparison of top-down versus bottom-up development interventions in rural Mexico: Practical and theoretical implications for community development programs. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.