Reach, Adoption, and Maintenance of Online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy at a University: An Implementation Case Study

College students are undergoing a mental health crisis and existing clinical resources at universities may be inadequate to meet their needs. One solution to this problem could be the use of self-guided, online programs for mental health that can be easily distributed to students. A persistent issue, however, is the transition from program development to implementation of a self-guided program at campus-wide scale. We describe, in a self-narrative format, the steps taken to translate an online program we developed based in acceptance and commitment therapy, called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide, from a research context to a campus-wide service at our university. We also present demographic, previous treatment, and referral data of over 1,500 student sign-ups to describe the reach of our program, how it was adopted into existing university services and systems, and how we maintained the program long term. Findings from these implementation efforts are discussed in the context of suggestions for using self-guided programs for students to fill gaps in mental health service provision in university settings. Impact Statement This project involved implementing an online mental health program at a statewide, land grant university. We describe the methods we used to translate an online evidence-based intervention from a research context to large-scale public adoption. We found that it was feasible to distribute our program to a large number of college students by combining several outreach strategies and collaborating with key university stakeholders.