Thursday, May 16, 2024
5/16/2024
Summary: North Dakota is a very rural state with service gaps in the accessibility of mental health services leaving critical access hospitals and long term care facilities to address these needs. This project will utilize the Mental Health First Aid evidence based program to annually train 1080 new individuals in rural communities and long term care facilities to address individuals with mental illness and increase referrals to mental health providers by 25%. Abstract: North Dakota is a very rural state with 49.5% of residents living in rural areas. Thirty-eight of fifty-three North Dakota counties are designated as frontier. Forty-nine of the fifty-three counties are identified as mental health professional shortage areas. Over 19% of North Dakota adults report having mental illness in the past year with almost 5% reporting serious mental illness. The mental health awareness training (MHAT) utilized in this proposal, Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), is intended to help the general public in rural North Dakota communities with an additional focus on older adults residing in the community and in long term care facilities. Quality Health Associates of North Dakota (QHA) will utilize the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) evidence based MHAT to accomplish the training. The curriculum introduces participants to risk factors and warning signs of mental health and substance use disorders, builds understanding of the importance of early intervention, and reviews common resources. QHA intends to increase staff capacity certified as MHFA Instructors to offer 36 to 40 virtual in-person trainings per year with 25 to 30 participants per training session with the goal of training 1,080 participants per year over the course of the 5 year project. In addition to increasing the number of individuals trained in MHFA, another objective of the project is to increase referrals to licensed mental health providers. Utilizing year one of the grant as a baseline, our goal is to increase referrals to committed mental health providers by 25% in year two of the project. A barrier to implementation of a statewide MHAT program is having mental health providers capable of accepting referrals from across the state. This barrier has been mitigated for this project by gaining the commitment of two organizations each with providers covering the entire state, the North Dakota Regional Human Service Centers and the Village Family Service Center have a combined 13 offices in North Dakota in locations that geographically spread across the state. In addition, materials will be created to increase public awareness of mental health services available in their community. In addition to working with these referral centers QHA will partner with other key stakeholders including the North Dakota Department of Health, the University of North Dakota Center for Rural Health (CRH), and the North Dakota Long Term Care Association (NDLTCA).
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).
