HIGHLIGHTS
- Many communities continue to experience challenges accessing quality behavioral health care and services.
- Abt helps SAMHSA advance behavioral health excellence through workforce development, data, policy, communications, and technical assistance.
- Abt supports community-driven approaches to improve access to high quality behavioral health services for all.
PROJECT
Achieving Behavioral Health Excellence
The Challenge
Many communities continue to experience differences in behavioral health outcomes. Linguistic and cultural barriers, stigmatized pathways to care, lack of adapted evidence-based interventions, and workforce capacity issues intersect with gaps in insurance coverage to result in varying access to quality care.
The Approach
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration engaged Abt and partner Change Matrix to support its mission to advance excellence in behavioral health care for all individuals and communities in the United States through the Achieving Behavioral Health Excellence (ABHE) initiative. The ABHE initiative supports signature programs and initiatives across five domains: policy; data; workforce development and practice improvement; communications; and technical assistance, partnerships, and customer service.
Abt and Change Matrix assist SAMHSA in policy and program support, knowledge development and application, resource and product development, best practice and quality improvement strategy compilation, and capacity building for community-based organizations (CBOs) in their efforts to build stronger behavioral health systems at national and community levels. By fostering ongoing partnerships, collaboration, and innovation with communities that are significantly impacted by the nation’s behavioral health challenges, the goal is to improve behavioral health in all communities and benefit all populations.
Key components of Abt’s approach include:
- Designing and implementing consultations with varied audiences with expertise and lived experience through a Behavioral Health Excellence Steering Committee, technical expert panels, and listening sessions.
- Supporting and maintaining the National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health (NNED), a virtual network of CBOs addressing behavioral health issues across all communities, through shared virtual workspace, partnership opportunities, a repository of behavioral health resources.
- Conducting a yearly three-day training designed for CBOs participating in the NNED (NNEDLearn). Training topics are informed by consultations with NNED members and various behavioral health experts, and may include topics such as leveraging technology to improve behavioral health service delivery, strengthening organizational infrastructure, and data storytelling.
- Refining the NNED website design and functionality to enhance the NNED’s reach and impact.
- Delivering capacity building activities for CBOs serving under-resourced communities through education and training workshops, partnership development, CBO connections, learning collaboratives, and resource development. The goal of this Elevate CBO Initiative is to build resilience, increase visibility, improve efficiency, and highlight the unique role of CBOs in improving behavioral health services and outcomes.
- Analyzing behavioral health research and data to identify responsive community engagement strategies and interventions.
The Results
Through the ABHE Initiative, Abt has:
- Conducted an analysis of submissions from an innovation challenge to identify outreach and engagement strategies to increase access to behavioral health services in communities and developed a roadmap for other federal agencies to design and implement innovation challenges.
- Delivered a redesigned NNEDLearn focused on building capacity in leadership and advocacy skills for organizations implementing behavioral health interventions.
- Convened a four-part virtual workshop series on data storytelling that focused on providing CBOs with tools to convey impact through data, narratives, and visuals. The series served 850 individuals representing over 750 organizations, serving all 50 states and two U.S. territories.
- Designed and implemented a Community-Defined Evidence Program (CDEP) Learning Collaborative to develop the capacity of CBOs nationwide to evaluate and build the evidence base for CDEPs.