Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley: Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment, and Aftercare - The Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley (IHC) is applying for the Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment, and Aftercare (SAPTA) project under the Substance Abuse and Suicide Prevention (SASP) Program in order to increase our capacity to identify and treat patients and community members in need of substance use disorder (SUD) services. This will be accomplished by strengthening the integration between our Behavioral Health/Substance Use Disorder (BH/SUD) services and Primary Care in our clinical setting, as well as enhancing existing partnerships with community stakeholder partners to provide services outside of our scope. Though our partnerships and by providing training, IHC will ensure that care received both in-house and from our community partners will be culturally relevant, acceptable, and accessible for our American Indian/Alaskan Native (AIAN) clients. Internally, IHC will increase screening of primary care clients for SUD and engage in brief education or intervention services in that setting, where appropriate. If more in-depth intervention is needed, clients will be referred to appropriate services.
IHC will also increase community knowledge and use of BH/SUD services by providing training to community members to identify the signs of SUD and available local resources. We will engage in a variety of outreach techniques, including the use of social media and community newsletters, to increase knowledge of available services and to decrease the stigma of using said services.
IHC will train 5 Native Youth Ambassadors annually to provide peer-to-peer education and support for Transition Aged Youth (TAYs) that is culturally relevant and age-appropriate. We will create two Community Advisory Boards (CABs)- 1 Tribal Youth Council (TYC) comprised of Youth Ambassadors and other Youth volunteers and the other of their parents. This will allow IHC to engage the community directly to ensure that the program is working and to make corrections as needed. We will also hold at least 2 Focus Groups on communication annually. Finally, IHC will create a “no wrong door” approach to allow anyone who needs care to access it by adding an out of network primary care provider who may refer non-patients to IHC BH services and creating an access point for non-clinical patients.
The SAPTA grant will allow IHC to continue the important but fraught work of reducing the burden of SUD in the SCC AIAN population by making it easier to access services, ensuring that those services are culturally relevant and competent, and strengthening community connections to reduce the risk of SUD.