Friday, April 4, 2025
4/4/2025
FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion - Health Center Program grant number: H80CS04287 Project Vida Health Center of El Paso, Texas, is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) incorporated in 2003 and provides relationship-based and culturally sensitive care to “make a community whole.” El Paso, Texas, is situated in a distinctive part of North America, the far western part of Texas adjoining the state of New Mexico to its north and northwest and the country of Mexico to its south and southwest. The total population of the El Paso, Culberson, and Hudspeth counties service area is 875,527 (US Census, 2023), with El Paso County comprising 99.4% of the population. Project Vida Health Center is a recognized partner in the El Paso area, bringing tremendous experience to successfully implement medical, behavioral, dental, and significant clinical care support services. Vida means “life” in Spanish, and PVHC’s tagline is “Life in Community.” They use a relationship-based, culturally informed, recovery-focused care system to improve health. PVHC engages and celebrates diversity amid El Paso’s bi-lingual and bi-cultural environment while focusing on the needs and possibilities of the underserved and often marginalized persons in a historically low-income area. Project Vida Health Center’s patient population has a high level of social determinants that can cause negative health impacts, such as very low income, minority status, and lack of health insurance; likely, the need gap is higher than HRSA’s average. PVHC’s 2023 UDS identified that 95% of patients have minority status, with 92% Hispanic/Latino/a, 6% non-Hispanic White, and 2% other. Almost half, 49%, prefer a language other than English. 48% of patients do not have health insurance, 28% have private insurance, 19% have Medicaid, and 6% have Medicare. PVHC patients have very low income, with 97% identifying income at or below 200% of poverty and 73% of patients’ income below the poverty line. This is primarily a hard-working population in low-wage jobs; 70% of the patient population is of working age, 21% are children, and almost 9% are elderly. Twelve percent of PVHC’s patient population identified as homeless. Community members and leaders throughout the region continue to identify substance use disorders as among the biggest health issues facing the service area, with high rates of preventable overdoses, teen suicides, and high rates of untreated substance use and mental health issues. El Paso’s ratio of population to behavioral health care providers is almost three times the national average, highlighting the need for more providers and clinical care support staff. Just in PVHC’s patient population, it is projected that up to 1,480 current patients may have a clinical need for mental health services, and 1,989 with a clinical need for substance use disorder services that are not in treatment. Seeking to address this significant gap in services in its patient population and the community at large, Project Vida Health Center (PVHC) proposes to leverage its new Psychiatry Residency Program and utilize Residents to clinically manage patients with mental health (MH), substance use disorder (SUD) conditions including the medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). Interested Primary Care Providers at PVHC will also be invited to learn and manage patients needing MOUD, resulting in a new program offering that will, over time, address the MH/SUD/MOUD unmet treatment needs of PVHC’s existing and new patients. In addition, three part-year peer recovery specialists and three substance use therapists will be added to primarily work with students at some of the 35 public schools where PVHC provides support and clinical services. By the end of 2025, Project Vida Health Center anticipates serving 50 more patients with medications for opioid use disorders (MOUD), 170 more patients with other substance abuse disorder care, and 625 more patients with mental health disorders.
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).