FY 2024 Behavioral Health Service Expansion - This project seeks to utilize IMAN’s existing infrastructure to expand our capacity to provide culturally-responsive and trauma-informed behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment at our federally qualified health center. This grant will allow us to bolster our staffing plan and increase service lines to adequately address community demands, including for youth and patients whose preferred language is Spanish. IMAN Health Center serves an extremely diverse service area that consists predominantly of people of color. 65% of households in our zip code speak Spanish at home, and many residents are not always aware of where there are bilingual healthcare services or bicultural providers with whom they can connect. According to consistent data from the Chicago Department of Public Health, our service area also has some of the highest fatal and nonfatal opioid overdose rates in Chicago. While CDPH reports that opioid deaths are typically highest in adults aged 45-64, data indicates that overdose deaths for city residents aged 15-24 is increasingly trending upwards. Add to this that in our service area, 9.5% of all residents are uninsured, and this project is an opportune one-stop shop in addressing these unmet health and social needs. This project would provide a needed space for youth, bilingual, bicultural families, and other community members with proximity to the opioid crisis and with untreated or under-treated behavioral health concerns to receive the holistic care and wraparound support services they need. To meet these needs, we will hire additional Behavioral Health staff, including: Patient Care Specialist (PCS), Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (CADC), Licensed Behavioral Health Therapist (bilingual), Case Manager (bilingual), Registered Art Therapist and a Social Services Manager. These crucial hires will allow us to close gaps in care that we’ve identified. Our clinic’s current operating hours present a barrier for youth to receive behavioral health services. By hiring an additional PCS, we will be able to expand our clinic’s operating hours to include more evening and weekend hours, along with dedicated administrative support with patient registration and financial tasks related to insurance verification and sliding scale fee navigation. Funding from this grant would help us attract qualified bilingual (Spanish/English) and bicultural staff to provide culturally-appropriate clinical individual, family and group therapy for individuals and families and case management to address social needs such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, lack of resources for children, etc., in patients’ preferred language. Having a clinician skilled in treating substance use disorders will be crucial to developing our clinic’s timely response to spikes in opioid overdoses, along with related interventions for treating substance use disorders. This hire would go out into the community as a part of our mobile unit care team and provide harm reduction intervention such as overdose education, naloxone distribution and point-of-care drug checking to test for additive substances such as fentanyl and xylazine. Also key to effective implementation of this project is integrating our Arts & Culture Department into our work. There is growing research on the benefits of art therapy and with the addition of a registered art therapist on our staff, we can further distinguish our program and increase our engagement, especially with youth, with the addition of a therapist who is trained in utilizing art as an intervention. As the department grows to include all of these expanded services, we will need a manager to help provide clinical supervision and administrative oversight of staff working on this project. IMAN’s clinical knowledge, operational experience, and expertise in serving at-risk populations position us to successfully carry out the proposed project and expand behavioral health and substance use treatment.
