Tuesday, April 23, 2024
4/23/2024
The Strengthening Mental Health in Education Initiative (SMHiE) addresses the considerable need for a robust, community-driven, linguistically, and culturally responsive behavioral health infrastructure in Oregon school communities. The work is guided by Oregon Department of Education’s (ODE) Integrated Model of Mental Health (IMMH), which roots mental health promotion, and suicide and substance use prevention efforts in 4 key pillars of practice: (a) strengths-based, (b) trauma-informed, (c) SEL-focused, and (d) equity-centered. The proposed Project AWARE work will augment Oregon’s SMHiE Initiative by fortifying state and local project management infrastructure and extending the existing ESSER III-funded 2-year project period to 5 years. Project AWARE resources will support additional community engagement, co-design, and program development, extend the implementation, iterative evaluation, quality improvement and sustainability phases, and provide additional state and local project management capabilities. The Initiative will serve roughly 560,917 public school students, 70,198 staff, 2,340 administrators, and CBOs that support Oregon’s 197 school districts, and consist of 4 primary components: (1) Increasing mental health literacy via an asynchronous, digital learning educational program and accompanying resources; (2) Developing and deploying credentialed, behavioral health courses and professional learning communities; (3) Co-designing and implementing of a Community Care project (CCP) to enhance behavioral health infrastructure in 4 school districts that represent the racial/ethnic, linguistic, geographic, and socio-demographic diversity of Oregon’s school communities; and (4) Understanding formative and summative project impact and recommendations for implementation, sustainability, and continuous quality improvement. Implementation efforts will be guided by ODE’s Community Engagement Toolkit and the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment (EPIS) framework. The Engagement Toolkit provides a systematic strategy for engaging communities in the decision-making and co-design processes. The EPIS framework builds on this engagement approach by accounting for and documenting the multilayered and interactive nature of the socioecological context of mental health promotion and suicide prevention across and within Oregon’s school districts. This project will also rely heavily on research-practice partnerships (RPP) that promote long-term collaborations among community partners. The RPP approach incorporates research into decision-making so that goals for addressing district needs focus on addressing meaningful problems of practice. RPPs will be applied according to tenants of Design Based Implementation Research (DBIR), where implementation and research teams closely partner with districts and school staff in a co-design process to ensure continuous engagement between researchers and practitioners. Measurable outcomes include increased mental health literacy, better identification of youth needing support, improved service referral, augmented suicide prevention, intervention and postvention efforts, enhanced student and staff health and well-being, school climates embodying belonging, care and connection, fewer disciplinary referrals, and improved academic success.
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).
