Community Healthlink's (CHL's) "Improving Access for All to Behavioral Health Treatment that Works: Implementing Evidence-Based Practices with and for Our Diverse Communities" will provide at least five (5) evidence-based practices to individuals and families 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 Central Massachusetts. The overarching goals of our projects are to increase equitable access to and outcomes from the full range of community behavioral health services using evidence-based practices that are implemented with fidelity and a fit for our diverse communities and to improve the behavioral health and quality of life of the population of focus in Central Massachusetts through this project. More specifically, we have the following 6 goals: 1) Community Healthlink will improve access for all the communities of central Massachusetts access to behavioral health treatment that works; 2) over the four years of the project, implement with fidelity to the model and in a sustainable way, using the best available implementation models, no less than five (5) evidence-based practices, as a member of SAMHSA's Implementation Science Pilot, including Solution-Focused Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis, and Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality; 3) Using approaches supported by or emerging from Implementation Science, and in partnership with UMass Chan iSPARC and SAMHSA's Implementation Science Pilot, create a culture and environment for access to evidence-based practices; 4) make and document any adaptations to the implemented evidence-based practices for subpopulations participating in the evidence-based practices in collaboration, when able, with model developers and/or trainers, our implementation science partner iSPARC, and the SAMHSA implementation pilot team; 5) individuals participating in evidence-based practices will demonstrate improvement from baseline on health measures by the end of treatment as measured by standardized measures used or recommended for each model, by identified measures used if none are recommended for the model, and/or by health indicators from NOMS; and 6) over four years, improve access by subpopulations by 20% to closer align our service population with our community population as evidenced by the demographic characteristics of participants in the project. Over the course of the entire project period, with SAMHSA funding, we propose to serve 1,450 unduplicated individuals: 250 in year 1, 300 in year 2, 400 in year 3, and 500 in year 4.
