Casa Care is a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) initiative providing culturally focused, comprehensive, coordinated health care to Latinx individuals and families in Greater Boston, home to Massachusetts’s largest Latinx population. The population of focus for Casa Care is low-income Latinxs experiencing substance misuse or mental illness, including those with serious mental illnesses (SMI). About 700 people will be served by the project (100 in year 1; 200 in years 2-4). The intersection of the mental health crisis, opioid epidemic, and homelessness crisis in Greater Boston has been deeply exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and structural factors (e.g., racism and class inequality), particularly for the largely homeless and/or recently incarcerated Latinx patients Casa serves. Due to the barriers Latinxs face when accessing SUD and COD treatment, they are less likely to have access to trauma-informed, culturally competent, evidence-based care; less likely to remain in care if they receive it; and are more likely to overdose and die than their White counterparts. Mindful of robust research demonstrating that Latinx patients are tremendously more likely to benefit from care if it is attuned to their cultural needs, Casa Care is a strategically designed to address treatment disparities facing Greater Boston’s low-income, Latinx residents.
Since opening its doors in 1984, Casa Esperanza has worked closely with leading academics, policymakers, advocates, and service providers to develop an intricate network of evidence-based recovery pathways leading patients to healthy and independent lifestyles. Relying on established medical and social science research, Casa Care is centered on five goals that will facilitate community public health. Each of these goals is informed by the Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment (IDDT) model, a widely tested set of interventions suitable for long-term use. Casa Care’s five goals are: (1) conducting a comprehensive community needs assessment to identify existing community needs and increase availability of services for Latinx with SUD, SMI, or COD; (2) improving access to and utilization of culturally focused, bilingual, trauma-informed, integrated substance use, mental health, and primary care for Latinxs; (3) developing a robust health network and clinical operations infrastructure to support the expansion of Casa’s comprehensive continuum of trauma-informed, evidence-based, integrated outpatient behavioral health and primary care services; (4) enhancing HIT infrastructure development to support alignment with CCBHC criteria; and (5) developing a robust plan for staffing, ongoing training and delivery of evidence-based practices. By delivering quality screening and assessment, treatment planning, outpatient services, targeted case management, residential treatment services, crisis stabilization services, peer support services, reentry services, and primary medical care, and other services, Casa Care actively strives to bridge the treatment gap.
