SAMHSA Grants Dashboard

Forward Leading IPA (FLIPA) is proposing a project under SAMHSA’s Community-Based Maternal BHS Grant to improve access to evidence-based, culturally relevant maternal behavioral health interventions and treatment within the cities of Rochester and Syracuse, New York. The project will partner FLIPA Member Organizations, including two FQHCs, Jordan Health and Syracuse Community Health with BHOs, and social care providers to establish inter-agency collaboration in team-based care for pregnant and postpartum individuals. The target population for this project is pregnant and postpartum individuals aged 12-50 years who are patients of either Jordan Health or Syracuse Community Health. Goals and objectives will be accomplished through the establishment of inter-agency team-based care across the partner agencies that includes both the overarching, consultative Behavioral Health Team and local implementation-focused i-ACT team. The goals of the project include increased screening for behavioral health within pregnant and post-partum populations, increased access to and engagement with behavioral health care for pregnant and postpartum individuals, strengthen community referral pathways and utilization of doulas, and provide short-term mental health and substance use services to those in need to improve maternal and infant health outcomes. Key components of the project include screening and referral to the program by the FQHCs, team-based care through the establishment of a Behavioral Health Team (BHT) and local implementation-focused maternal i-ACT teams to provide care coordination, social care navigation, and mental health support. FLIPA’s structure is steeped in the role of collaboration and partnership both for member organizations and community partners and FLIPA will serve as a liaison between referring and accepting agencies, facilitating communication and collaboration among care teams. FLIPA anticipates the outcomes of this project to include universal behavioral health screening for pregnant and post-partum individuals, enhanced collaboration among care providers, successful implementation of the Behavioral Health Team and i-ACT model to support team-based care and improve access to behavioral health care for pregnant and postpartum individuals. FLIPA was founded in 2017 to support federally qualified health centers (FQHC), behavioral health organizations, and social care provider member agencies located across New York State. FLIPA supports quality standardization and improvement projects, and successful value-based payment contracting to ensure equitable, accessible health care and care coordination are available across communities served by 22 member organizations serving 27 counties. FLIPA is committed to improving maternal and child health and over the past 2 years has developed and disseminated multiple Standards of Care related to Maternal Child Health across the network. FLIPA has been working on an initiative to increase access to birthing doulas since 2023 and supported the evaluation of the Doula Program between Member Organization Finger Lakes Community Health and the Healthy Baby Network’s Black and Brown Doula Program. The program showed positive outcomes specific to prenatal care, breastfeeding initiation rates, and decreased use of unnecessary medical interventions as compared to county, regional, state, and federal metrics. Additionally, FLIPA is the lead for the Finger Lakes Region’s Social Care Network (SCN) in NYS, leading the development of a network of community-based organizations and a process for screening all Medicaid recipients for health-related social needs such as housing, transportation, and food; referring them to service providers in the region; and using a closed-loop referral platform to electronically track all referral connections.

Nazareth proposes to Increase access to mental health services in our region through inter-professional mental health clinics created from integrating and scaling up behavioral/mental health services currently provided on campus through the York Wellness & Rehabilitation Institute. The York Institute is the umbrella for clinical education for Nazareth's health and human services programs in art therapy, music therapy, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, social work, and speech-language pathology. Certi?ed and licensed clinical educators mentor student clinicians in the provision of therapy and wellness services as part of their development of clinical knowledge and skills. The York Institute provides thousands of hours of free services annually in a constellation of allied health clinics to underserved populations from neighborhoods throughout Monroe and surrounding counties, with several individual clinics providing behavioral/mental health services. A new integrated model for child and adolescent mental health services will include art therapy, music therapy, nursing, play therapy, and social work services.

The CCSI Homeless Partnership Program is a community collaboration that brings together key organizations with the intent of improving access to, and retention in, services to support persons with Serious Mental Illness (SMI) or Co-Occurring Disorders (SMI/Substance Use Disorders) who are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness to be successful in recovery and in maintain stable housing. The project goals are to: • Increase the capacity of the behavioral health and homeless systems to identify and engage persons with SMI and/or COD who are homeless and not engaged in service • Identify sustainable permanent housing options for individuals enrolled in the Project • Provide evidence-based, integrated mental health and substance use interventions for COD treatment and case management services for enrolled individuals • Provide linkages to recovery support services The geographic area to be served is Monroe County, New York. The Project brings together organizations who provide services within and/or oversee the Mental Health, Substance Use Disorder, Medicaid, Homeless, and Housing systems in the community, along with community-based and peer-run recovery support services. It puts in place an infrastructure to support the integration of services from the various service delivery systems in providing integrated care, recovery support, and housing for the population of focus (adults 18+ with SMI or COD who are experiencing homelessness or at imminent risk of homelessness). This will be accomplished through establishing processes for easy access and incorporating a focus on evidence-based approaches throughout outreach, engagement, care management, treatment, and housing. Primary interventions to be used include Critical Time Intervention, Peer Support/Recovery Coaches, Housing First, and Integrated Treatment for COD. These interventions will be supported with training and coaching of Project staff and community partner agencies in areas such as Motivational Interviewing, Health Equity, Trauma-Informed care, Housing First, and the CTI approach. The project is designed to set procedures and practices in place that can easily be expanded over the duration of the grant to support growth in the use of evidence-based strategies for engagement, care management, and treatment to meet the needs of the population of focus and foster stability in permanent housing. The Project will serve 75 individuals per year (45 in Year 1), for a total of 345 persons over the five-year duration of the grant. It is expected that the population to be served will mirror that of the homeless and/or behavioral health population in Monroe County, with a significant proportion of this population being non-white.

Finger Lakes Independent Provider Association (FLIPA) is requesting $3,941,621 over 5 years in SAMHSA Linking Actions for Unmet Needs in Children’s Health program (LAUNCH) funding for the FLIPA LAUNCH project. The overarching goal of the project is to promote the wellness of young children, from birth to 8 years of age, by addressing the social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and behavioral aspects of their development, as well as to prepare them to thrive in school and beyond. FLIPA LAUNCH will promote resilience and emotional health for children, youth, and their families in Upstate New York (NY) through training and dissemination of resources on effective and innovative early childhood mental health practices and services, expedited connections to services, and increased mental health services. FLIPA exists to support federally qualified health centers (FQHC), behavioral health care, and social care provider members located in the Finger Lakes, Central NY, Southern Tier, Capital, and North Country regions of Upstate New York in quality standardization and improvement projects and value-based payment (VBP) readiness and contracting. FLIPA includes 22 healthcare providers serving 27 counties (all included in this project) and is currently providing care for over 300,000 people. The total population of the service area is 4,331,637. The service area includes 20 rural counties, 5 counties with some rural areas, and 2 counties that are not rural. Three of NY’s largest cities—Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany—are also included in the service area. The area is burdened by rising poverty and, especially among families with children, very limited transportation options (including in cities), limited education levels particularly among parents of children in poverty, and very limited community resources particularly for children with behavioral health needs. The average per capita income per county is $33,789 compared to $37,638 across the US and $43,208 for NY statewide. On average, in counties served by FLIPA: • 13% of people live in poverty compared to 11.6% across the US. • 18.2% of children live in poverty. 11 counties have 20+% of children living in poverty. • 36.2% of female-headed households with children live in poverty. The project will achieve these outcomes: (1) increased number of caregivers and professionals who have received training in prevention or mental health promotion; (2) increased number of organizations collaborating/coordinating/sharing resources with other organizations; (3) increased number of individuals screened for mental health or related interventions; (4) increased number of individuals referred to mental health or related services; and (5) increased number of people receiving evidence-based mental health-related services. Strategies planned to achieve these aims include but are not limited to: standardizing a comprehensive list of physical and behavioral health, development, cognitive functioning, and social determinant of health screenings and assessments for children birth to 8 years of age (young children) to be implemented by all FLIPA FQHCs; establishing an online repository of asynchronous video trainings and other resources for parents, early childhood educators, childcare providers, and healthcare providers for supporting building positive behaviors and supporting mental health and wellness in young children and their families that is based on evidence-based and best practices (EB/BP); making available brief videos using EB/BPs on YouTube and social media; offering live remote parent educational support/treatment groups and healthcare provider learning collaboratives; partnering with Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) to engage psychology predoctoral interns as additional mental health providers and expert child psychologists in teaching and administrative positions as consultant providers; establishing new child mental health care levels such as a mental health treatment camp.

The Mental Health Awareness Across Campus (MHAAC) project will integrate a holistic and campus-wide approach to mental health education and suicide prevention at Nazareth College, a small, private institution in Rochester, NY. This project will address an urgent and critical need to increase campus capacity to implement, sustain, and improve effective suicide prevention, mental health prevention services and substance use prevention services on campus. MHAAC will increase the Nazareth community’s ability to recognize, respond to, and refer students who are struggling with mental health issues such as substance use, self-harm, and suicidal ideation by providing mental health and AOD training to 130 faculty/staff and 318 students as well as training key staff to be able to further train the campus community. MHAAC will also create an outreach and preventative services structure on campus to reduce symptoms of mental illness, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation, and reach over 2000 people with mental health awareness messaging and programming.

The Monroe County BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Peer Advocate Training and Development Program will use grant funding to train community residents to become certified BIPOC Peer Advocates. The comprehensive training will be facilitated through a partnership with a local organization(s) and foster further BIPOC Peer Advocate employment opportunities. The training prepares and guides individuals through the certification process for the Recovery Peer Advocate Certificate (CRPA & CRPA-P), NYS Peer Certification, and/or the NY Certified Peer Specialist (NYCPS/NYCPS-P) certification. The comprehensive training will facilitate further employment opportunities for participants. The Monroe County Office of Mental Health will oversee community partner agencies, who in addition to training, will have the goal of employment placement and ongoing support to participants. Effective mental health and/or substance abuse treatment is enhanced by the support of Peer Advocates - individuals with lived experience in substance abuse or mental health disorders aligned to support the recovery goals of individuals currently in treatment. Peers are proven to increase the likelihood that a participant stays in treatment and achieves success in recovery. This project will establish credible messengers in the Monroe County BIPOC community who can provide empathy, navigation, and support in the face of inequities, poverty, COVID-19, an opioid crisis, widespread community violence, and historical trauma. Due to a variety of factors BIPOC populations historically have been wary of treatment providers and services. In Monroe County, there is a dearth of Peer Advocates of color, and recent data demonstrates that BIPOC residents are significantly less likely to participate in treatment for mental health and substance abuse than their peers of other racial and ethnic groups. BIPOC residents of Monroe County are suffering and dying prematurely due to a lack of culturally responsive mental healthcare, which is why this is the population of focus for this project. The project goal is for Monroe County’s BIPOC children, youth, and families to have culturally responsive, community based, and community driven mental health services and representative supports to ameliorate the effects of generations of structural racism, concentrated poverty, and racialized trauma and build protective factors for a healthier future. The project period is for one year and will train at least 100, and up to 200 unduplicated BIPOC adults with lived experience in mental health or substance abuse to become certified BIPOC Peer Advocates. The training and certification fees can be a barrier to individuals and will be provided at no charge to participants through this project. Success will be measured by tracking the number of BIPOC individuals recruited for training, receiving certification, and with job placements occurring following the training series, as well as those reaching six-month job retention. A pre and post program survey will assist in measuring participants’ knowledge, comfort, and competency before and after the training to demonstrate its impact on preparing participants to do this meaningful and challenging work. At the conclusion of the project increased resources for culturally responsive support and guidance toward mental health and substance abuse treatment will be available to our local BIPOC community, through newly trained and certified Peer Advocates. Both certification pathways will increase Peer Advocate employment opportunities for the individuals and increase the availability of BIPOC Peer Advocates in the mental health and substance abuse fields, thereby encouraging and supporting those members of local BIPOC community in need of these services to seek treatment.

Mt. Hope Family Center's Project Sustaining Change will provide training, consultation, and technical assistance for child- and family-serving organizations and systems to improve dissemination and implementation of evidence-based treatment models for child trauma. Focusing on sustainability through organizational supports will promote longer-term accessibility to services for traumatized children, adolescents, and their families and enhance supports for best practices in child-serving systems. Goals of Sustaining Change include to: 1) expand access to evidence-based treatment for children and youth who have had traumatic experiences, and assist organizations in adopting and providing evidence-based models of intervention, 2) support organizations in identifying evidence-based interventions that fit the needs of their population served and organization, and in achieving successful evidence-based implementation through Implementation Science principles, 3) facilitate sustainability of evidence-based interventions through consultation and Leadership Forums, and 4) assist organizations in gaining an understanding of trauma-informed care, and adopting the guiding principles to embed trauma-informed care within their organizations and systems. Evidence-based training for 50 clinicians in Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents will improve access to treatment for traumatized youth with depressive symptoms and provision of Child-Parent Psychotherapy by 50 clinicians will improve access to trauma-informed treatment for children under age six and families. This training will be offered through 8 Learning Collaboratives. Education on evidence-based intervention in child welfare and mental health organizations will be provided through 5 webinars and 2 Leadership Forums. Through a partnership with the TRANSFORM National Child Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Sustaining Change synergistically will leverage existing resources that translate research into best practices to maximize reach and depth of trauma-informed care to break the intergenerational transmission of trauma and assist organizations in adopting and providing evidence-based models of intervention. Consultation on trauma-informed organizational transformation will support 3 reflective supervision cohorts, improve prevention of secondary traumatic stress, and change agency climate to enhance workforce development and integrate SAMHSA's trauma-informed principles into practice for 2-5 organizations. Training will be targeted to child-serving organizations nationally, and will include over 1000 professionals trained over the course of the project. Trainings and consultation will include in-person, webinars, videoconferencing, leadership forums, and access to resources through the TRANSFORM website and social media. Evidence-based interventions and principles of trauma-informed care exist that can successfully impact the lives of individuals who have experienced trauma. Sustaining Change can offer hope through its network of supports and prepare the next generation of supervisors and practitioners to implement evidence-based trauma treatments into practice in sustainable ways.

Project STRONGER will support children and families in the Greater Rochester, NY area, including Monroe, Livingston, Ontario, Orleans, and Wayne counties who have been exposed to and impacted by trauma, especially those children exposed to child maltreatment, interpersonal, and community violence. STRONGER will provide services for unaccompanied refugee, immigrant, and international children in our community, who may experience symptoms of traumatic stress stemming from their experiences. Trauma-informed mental health services will be available for military-affiliated children and families, aided by the additional telehealth service delivery platform. STRONGER was designed to enhance the availability of culturally-informed evidence-based trauma treatment services for children and families who might be struggling with the impact of trauma exposure, such as relational, developmental, and mental health challenges. Addressing the reality of health care disparities, and often limited access to appropriate and sensitive care, especially during the pandemic, STRONGER will partner with local child-serving community systems such as child welfare, mental health, early childhood services, refugee and international supports, school districts, and military-affiliated organizations over the course of the project, to identify children exposed to trauma in need of treatment and link with our services. Staff will utilize extensive outreach and other engagement strategies to combat stigma associated with mental health treatment, and commit to provision of care that includes thorough assessment, care management, and evidence-based therapy. If funded, this grant will continue Mt. Hope Family Center's membership within the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCSN). Through STRONGER, approximately 150 children and caregivers will receive services annually, for a total of 750 individuals being served over the five-year project. We will offer Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents (IPT-A), Tuning Into Kids-Teens (TIK-T), and Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R) for children and caregivers depending on developmental levels and needs. STRONGER will draw on the resources generated through NCTSN and SAMHSA, to provide psychoeducation and ongoing dialogue regarding trauma-informed care with community partners and referral sources. STRONGER will collaborate with NCTSI-Category II Treatment and Service Adaptation Centers to develop, advance, or adapt trauma-informed interventions. STRONGER builds on existing collaborative efforts of a multidisciplinary team of community stakeholders, including a Community Advisory Board and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Team working to improve the lives of children and families exposed to trauma.

UR Supporting Our Students will enhance the capacity of middle and high school educators within the NY Finger Lakes (FLX) region to support adolescents with behavioral health (BH) needs, including those with serious emotional disturbances (SEDs). This will be accomplished via 1) implementation of a Project ECHO® [Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes], paired with Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) and 2) development of new adolescent BH referral streams. Our first goal is to enhance school-based workforce capacity to identify, approach, refer, and support teens with BH needs. Obj.1a: Improve and deepen school-based workforce knowledge, skills, and confidence in adolescent BH via 5-month county-specific UR-SOS Project ECHO®s. Selected school BH leaders (inc. school mental health staff, administrators, nurses, teacher leaders, and parent reps) will participate in twice-monthly ECHO® sessions focused on enhancing school team’s knowledge, skills, and confidence in (1) recognizing and approaching youth in distress, (2) school-based safety planning, (3) brief crisis intervention & de-escalation strategies, (4) referral to treatment & community resources, and (5) special considerations regarding SEDs. This is followed by case-based learning paired with expert and peer consultation, resulting in a teach-all learn-all model. With videoconferencing technology, school teams can participate in trainings from their own communities, a model well-suited to expanding capacity within rural communities like those found in the FLX. Obj.1b: Expand school-based workforce capacity via development of YMHFA trainers. A member of each school’s ECHO® team will be trained as a YMHFA trainer, and will deliver at least 3 YMHFA courses in their communities, offering others the skills they need to support to adolescents struggling with BH challenges. Our second goal is to facilitate development of referral streams for adolescent BH. Obj. 2a: Develop new school-based referral stream to a regional outpatient center for BH intervention offered by licensed child & adolescent BH providers. Obj. 2b: Enhance community knowledge and tools to support adolescent BH via creation of a community resource directory and toolkit. Impact: 90 ECHO® sessions will be held over 5 years, including 10 in Y1 and 20 in each Y2-5. ECHO® participants will include between 30-56 school personnel from 5-7 schools in Y1, and 60-112 from 10-14 schools in Y2-5, serving 45-66 schools and 225-504 unduplicated individuals. We will also train 16 ECHO® members as YMHFA trainers annually, totaling 80 new YMHFA trainers in 5 years. To disseminate knowledge across the FLX region, each trainer will train between 30-90 community members in YMHFA, totaling 2400-7200 unduplicated community participants. In total, BH awareness training will be offered to 2265-5984 individuals. UR-SOS will also develop a new school-based referral stream to UR-Medicine’s Crisis Intervention Service, a regional directory identifying at least 10 adolescent BH services, agencies, and resources, and a toolkit with 20 tools, screeners, checklists, and other resources; and a bank of 90 PowerPoint slides and recordings of trainings.

Monroe County Partnership for Homeless with Serious Behavioral Health Needs