Tuesday, May 7, 2024
5/7/2024
In Duval County Florida, one the nation’s 28 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTAs), youth with four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), are using substances at twice the level of their less trauma-affected peers. Many of these youths’ families experience generational poverty, housing and food insecurity, literacy challenges, domestic violence, substance misuse, and trauma. Many of these adversities are disproportionately experienced by black and brown youth and families. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these and other long-standing systemic health and socio-economic inequities that predate the pandemic. Our Proposed Family TREE project, River Oak Center (“The ROC”) Recovery School, will serve 450 of these youth 14-19 years of age and their families (population of focus) over the 5-year grant period. The proposed approach will apply evidence from research on developmental cascades to inform a new comprehensive youth-and family-centered SUD intervention, treatment, and recovery support model that incorporates multiple relevant evidence-based practices (EBPs) that address the complexity of the biopsychosocial pathways that underlie SUDs. First developed in 2014, the River Oak Center (The ROC), Florida’s first Recovery High School began with just two students, grew quickly, and has since served 170 youth. Currently, the ROC program supports the educational needs of teens and to some extent simultaneously addresses some of their substance use risk and disorders through delivery of five modules from SAMHSA’s Cannabis Youth Treatment (CYT) MET/CBT-5 and basic 12-Step approaches. Our service experience to date, and the research and gray literature supports, the realization that youth substance use is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and as such, can rarely be resolved by a single EBP. We are proposing to greatly expand, enhance, and intensify the SUD interventions for youth, and add in-depth screening, assessment, and service delivery for their families using High Intensity Wraparound, Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Certified Recovery Support Specialist (CRSS) service/supports, and Narconon. LSF Health Systems (LSF), one of 7 behavioral health Managing Entities (ME) contracted by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), will serve as the applicant. LSF’s management of more than 55 community-based health/behavioral health and human services provider contracts renders it in an ideal oversight position for the administrative and systems of care coordination role, and positions the project well for potential sustainability. The evaluation team will be led by Kathy Meyers, Ph.D. who has more than 30 years as a clinical researcher, system change consultant, and technical assistance consultant improving the way in which adolescent services are designed and delivered to youth in this country. Dr. Meyers and her team will apply their decades of experience collecting, analyzing and reporting GPRA data to this project evaluation as well as to the dissemination of project outcomes and lessons learned through gray literature, journal articles, and other publications to foster project sustainability.
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).
