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The Wyoming State Opioid Response (SOR) Project will focus on the State of Wyoming at large and will provide treatment, recovery, and prevention services related to opioid use disorders and stimulant use disorders. Beyond the general population, special populations of need for focus of efforts will be native american and justice involved populations. Wyoming will contract with multiple subrecipient Substance Use Disorder Providers throughout Wyoming to provide opioid use disorder and stimulant use disorder treatment and recovery support services. Locations will be chosen through an application process with a focus on ensuring statewide coverage through choosing at least one subrecipient in each region.

Wyoming’s Project AWARE is to design, implement, and enhance a comprehensive, coordinated, and integrated school and community mental health services system. The partnering of three Local Education Agencies (LEAs), their community’s health entities, a mental health entity, and the Wyoming Department of Education and Wyoming Department of Health will foster the goal of a statewide system addressing school-aged youth mental health and substance abuse issues. Although the services system must be individualized to be effective within the community, there is a need for a reliable, standardized statewide system to coordinate and track progress, best practices, and sharing successes in addressing school-aged youth and mental health issues. The need for a statewide system is critical due to Wyoming being a rural state. Wyoming occupies 97,818 square miles (10th population of 578,759). The three LEAs, Campbell County School District #1, Fremont County School District #1, and Park County School District #1, have a combined student population of 12,493 students. Wyoming anticipates serving the mental health and substance abuse needs of up to 2,499 students that is a 20% prevalence rate. This potentially provides $1.1M of care through mental health outpatient visits for the students annually. We anticipate an uninsured cost of $90,630 based on an 8% uninsured rate within this student group. Due to the predominantly frontier and rural nature of Wyoming, there are opportunities to utilize telehealth services in a complementary fashion with the LEA personnel, mental health professionals, and families. Telehealth can bring the capability to treat at a higher echelon of care where a staff member such as a psychologist would be unavailable due to physical limitations. The Wyoming Telehealth Association reports that 79% of all telehealth is utilized for behavioral health needs. This would work concurrently with our expansion of infrastructure and support growth of our overall model. Wyoming’ Project AWARE has established four goals, the first is to increase access to mental health and substance abuse services for school-aged youth. The second goal is to increase each LEA’s student, parent, and family knowledge of mental health and substance abuse services available, develop student skills that will promote resilience, pro-social behaviors and prevent youth violence through outreach, engagement, and training. The third goal is to increase each LEA’s capacity to recognize and appropriately respond to mental health and substance abuse needs of students through professional development and training. The final goal is to develop state and LEA level infrastructures foster wellness in school-aged youth and their families.