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. Dr. Larrison was 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).

BS, Human Behavior & Family Studies, Cornell University, 1988

MSW, University of Georgia, 1996

PhD, Social Work, University of Georgia, 1999