Sunday, May 18, 2025
5/18/2025
Increasing Access to Quality Community Behavioral Health Care - Community Healthlink's (CHL's) "Expanding Access to Quality Community Behavioral Health Care" will provide high-quality behavioral health care services to individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) or substance use disorders (SUD), including opioid use disorders (OUD); children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance (SED); and individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance disorders (COD) in the cities of Worcester and Leominster, in Central Massachusetts. The overarching goals of our project are to increase access to the full range of community behavioral health services and to improve the behavioral health and quality of life of the population of focus in Worcester and Leominster, MA through the certification of CHL as a CCBHC and the expansion of our community behavioral health clinic services that align with both CCBHC certification and the needs of our community. More specifically, we have the following 6 goals: 1) Increase access to behavioral health treatment for the population of focus by increasing CHL's screening, assessment, and referral capacity; 2) Increase care coordination for the population of focus by providing it for individuals who would not otherwise be eligible to receive such services; 3) Increase access to medication assisted treatment (MAT) for individuals in the population of focus with opioid use disorder; 4) Improve access to integrated care by increasing the number of children with serious emotional disturbance to whom we provide primary care screening and monitoring of key health indicators and health risks; 5) increase our capacity to provide mental health peer support in outpatient settings for the population of focus; and 6) Increase the level of functioning for individuals in the population of focus who receive CCBHC services from CHL. Over the course of the entire project period, with SAMHSA funding, we propose to serve an 1,000 unduplicated individuals in year 1, and another 1,500 unduplicated individuals in year 2, for a total of 2,500 unduplicated individuals over the entire project.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).