What Is the Recipe for PCBH? Proposed Resources, Processes, and Expected Outcomes

What is the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model of service delivery? Clinician innovators, administrators, and researchers have continued to refine the answer to this question. In the same way a recipe for mac n cheese provides the resources needed (i.e., ingredients), processes to make the dish, and expected outcomes (e.g., number of servings), a comprehensive operational definition for PCBH is needed to help improve the rigor of research being conducted. This recipe can also help clinicians/administrators identify a basic recipe for PCBH that standardizes the necessary components and amounts to achieve the expected outcomes. In this editorial, we provide a comprehensive operational recipe for PCBH based on current research. We are calling people to assist us by (a) utilizing the recipe to help improve the reporting and rigor of PCBH research and (b) applying the proposed operational definitions and targets within the recipe to help us refine and validate them. Public Significance StatementThis article discusses a comprehensive operational definition for PCBH, which includes resources/structural components, activities/processes, and expected outcomes.