HIGHLIGHTS
- Underserved communities continue to experience behavioral health disparities and inequitable access to quality care.
- Abt is helping SAMHSA advance behavioral health excellence through policy, data, workforce development, communications, and technical assistance initiatives.
- Through the Achieving Behavioral Health Excellence initiative, the Abt team will support community-driven approaches to improving behavioral health in historically underserved populations.
PROJECT
Achieving Behavioral Health Excellence
The Challenge
Underserved and under-resourced communities continue to experience disparities in behavioral health outcomes. Linguistic and cultural barriers, stigmatized pathways to care, lack of culturally-adapted evidence-based interventions, and workforce capacity issues intersect with disparities in insurance coverage to result in inequitable access to quality care and perpetuation of disparities.
The Approach
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Office of Behavioral Health Equity (OBHE) contracted with Abt and partner Change Matrix to support its mission to advance excellence in behavioral health care for underserved communities and populations through the Achieving Behavioral Health Excellence (ABHE) initiative. The ABHE initiative supports the signature programs and initiatives across all five of OBHE’s domains: policy; data; workforce development and practice improvement; communications; and technical assistance, partnerships, and customer service.
Abt and Change Matrix assist SAMHSA’s OBHE 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 in their efforts to build stronger behavioral health systems at national and community levels. By fostering ongoing partnerships, collaboration, and innovation with under-resourced communities that bear a disproportionate share of the nation’s behavioral health challenges, the goal is to improve behavioral health in underserved and under-resourced communities and potentially 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 in diverse communities, through shared virtual workspace, partnership opportunities, a repository of behavioral health
- Conducting yearly three-day training designed for CBOs participating in the NNED (NNEDLearn). Training topics are informed by consultations with various behavioral health experts.
- Developing a refined 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 material development. The goal of this Elevate CBO Initiative is to build capacity and resilience, increase the visibility, and highlight the unique role of CBOs serving under-resourced and underserved communities to improve behavioral health services and outcomes.
- Analyzing behavioral health disparity research and data to identify responsive community engagement strategies and interventions.
The Results
Through the ABHE Initiative, Abt:
- Hosted and facilitated a two-day Technical Experts Panel (TEP) with CBOs, previous NNEDLearn trainers, and past NNEDLearn participants to share feedback, insights, and ideas for future years of NNEDLearn.
- Redesigned NNEDLearn using insights from the TEP to focus on building capacity in leadership and advocacy skills for organizations implementing specific behavioral health interventions.
- Convened a four-part virtual workshop series on data storytelling that focused on providing CBOs with the tools necessary to convey their impact through data, narratives, and visuals. Over 850 individuals representing over 750 organizations, serving all 50 states and two U.S. territories, participated in the workshop series.
- Designed and implemented a Community-Defined Evidence Program Learning Collaborative (CDEP LC) to develop the capacity of CBOs to systematically evaluate and build the evidence base for CDEPs.
- Supported development of SAMHSA’s Language Access Plan.