Friday, December 27, 2024
12/27/2024
International Community Health Services (ICHS) provides comprehensive healthcare to residents of Seattle and the surrounding areas. Deeply rooted in the Asian Pacific Islander Community, ICHS provides culturally and linguistically appropriate health and wellness services and promotes health equity for all. In 2023, ICHS served a total of 31,147 unduplicated patients. Of this total, 78% were People of Color, 78% had incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty limit, and 58% were best served in a language other than English, speaking over 70 languages. Because of our diverse patient populations and roots, our vision at ICHS is “Healthier People. Thriving Families. Empowered Communities. A Just society.” Part of this vision is ensuring that we are addressing the behavioral health needs of our patients and families. Over the last few years, partly due to COVID-19, the behavioral health needs of our patients and the community has increased, while at the same time, access to behavioral health in outpatient settings has decreased or has been unable to keep up with the demand. As a result of this, ICHS is seeing more patients in the primary care setting with complex mental health and substance use needs. With this project, we will increase access to behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment, while at the same time addressing the social determinants of health of our patients, and providing more training and support to our employees. In order to accomplish this expansion, ICHS will hire Behavioral Health Care Coordinators to support tracking and follow-up of more complex patients, a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner to support providers and provide psychiatric services to patients, and a Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Professional to better support patients who need SUD services and/or medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). In addition, ICHS will use grant funds to provide training and consultation that will help staff work at the top of their licenses and improve understanding of the Primary Care Behavioral Health and Collaborative Care models. The new personnel and training will increase ICHS’ capacity to provide comprehensive, integrated, and effective mental health and SUD services, which will be linguistically and culturally appropriate. This will result in more internal referrals of medical patients to necessary behavioral health care and an increase in patients who newly access mental health services, SUD services, and MOUD at ICHS, as measured in ICHS’ 2025 Uniform Data System (UDS) Report. All patients will experience an improvement in access to behavioral health services, but given ICHS’ patient population, the patients that will see the greatest benefit will be People of Color and members of low-income and limited English proficient communities. ICHS' Health Center Program grant number is H80CS00437.
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).