The Center for Care Innovations (CCI) is pleased to announce the 2023-2024 Addiction Treatment Starts Here Equity-Centered Community Learning Collaborative (aka “ATSH Equity Collaborative”), their fourth wave of programming to support community health centers’ identification and treatment of substance use disorders.
Donor Name: Center for Care Innovations
State: California
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 12/12/2022
Size of the Grant: $75,000
Grant Duration: 16 months
Details:
The goal of the ATSH Equity-Centered Community Learning Collaborative is to address, and ultimately eliminate, substance use disorder (SUD) inequities.
Drivers of systemic inequities that include the criminalization of substance use, racism, and structural barriers to health services drive a tremendous treatment gap: only 5% of people with substance use disorders get treatment for these conditions any given year. Closing this treatment gap will require a health equity approach to community health center-based substance use disorder treatment.
This ATSH Equity Collaborative will support up to 20 primary care health centers in California with existing MAT programs to expand the reach of these MAT program through improving health equity by identifying and addressing inequities in outcomes and treatment for patients with SUDs, developing effective partnerships with other clinics and nonmedical community based organizations (including, but not limited to, addiction treatment programs, street outreach programs, syringe service and other harm reduction programs), and extending the focus to include multiple substances including opioid, stimulant, alcohol, and/or tobacco use disorders.
This program track is for health center sites with established medications for addiction treatment (MAT) programs. Up to 20 health center sites in California will be selected to participate in this 16-month collaborative. It will offer learning sessions and webinars led by experts in the field, site visits to organizations with exemplar MAT programs that center equity and racial justice, one-on-one coaching, and other technical assistance to support each organization in expanding the reach of existing MAT programs and addressing inequities in substance use disorder treatment and outcomes.
Program Components
Curriculum Topics
The curriculum has been designed by state and national experts and is based on lessons learned from CCI’s previous MAT collaboratives. Content will address clinical and operational issues associated with MAT equity, including but not limited to:
- Health equity foundations, strategies for identifying health inequities, and implementing a health equity program
- Expanding primary care MAT program models, including community partnerships with community-based organizations and/or involving peer support workers, to reduce SUD treatment, access, and health outcome disparities
- Patient identification, selection, and outreach
- Staff training and education for MAT, especially addressing equity and relationships with community partners
- Assessing levels of care and building strong referral pathways to specialty care when appropriate
- Strategies to reduce barriers to care – specifically racism, discrimination, stigma, and trauma – by actively embracing health equity practices
- Harm reduction
- Trauma-informed care
- Tools and approaches to address stimulant use disorder and manage co-occurring SUDs, such as alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, tobacco, and/or benzodiazepine use
- Systems practice tools to support building partnerships and collaborations across care transition points, such as with acute care hospitals with emergency departments, sobering centers, behavioral health programs, schools, and the justice system
ATSH Equity Collaborative Activities
CCI designed a mix of program activities that have proven effective in enabling teams to expand access to MAT. Program activities include:
- Learning Sessions: A mix of virtual and in-person learning sessions to share and learn from peers and experts
- Webinars: To orient teams on the program requirements, evaluation, and data collection
- Site Visits: (Optional) Learn from sites with mature MAT programs, that center equity and racial justice. Site visits are likely to include virtual and in-person options
- Half-day training addressing a specific topic (e.g., equity, harm reduction)
- 1:1 coaching to support your team. Coaches’ expertise include MAT clinics, health equity, systems practices/community partnerships, and quality improvement
- Virtual role-based peer forums, e.g., one group for nurses, another for prescribers, or SUD counselors, etc.
- Online community to share resources and communicate
- Grants of $75,000 to help offset the costs of participating in program activities, support community linkages and community partnerships, regularly submit data, and/or expand and sustain a MAT program
Funding Information
Health centers accepted into the program will be eligible for up to $75,000 in funding. The 16-month learning collaborative will launch in February 2023 and conclude in June 2024.
Eligibility Criteria
- Organizations in California that provide comprehensive primary care services to underserved populations are eligible to apply. Organizations must be non-profit and tax exempt under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code or a governmental, tribal, or public entity. This includes:
- Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and FQHC look-alikes.
- Community clinics, rural health clinics, and free clinics.
- Ambulatory care clinics owned and operated by local jurisdictions such as public hospitals.
- Indian Health Services clinics.
- Applicants should not be ‘new’ to MAT, in other words they should have an established MAT program that has been in operation for not less than one year, with multiple active prescribers working within an established multidisciplinary team (e.g., nurse, SUD counselor, peer support worker, other behavioral health practitioner) that meets regularly to maintain and improve the MAT program.
- They encourage applicants to apply who already have, or have begun to, develop partnerships with key stakeholders in their community (e.g., health department, schools, needle exchange, justice, etc.). It’s suggested, if applicable, to involve the partner(s) in the application stage, in particular what the clinic and their community partner hope to achieve together and set as aims for the collaborative. They are also welcoming applicants who are just starting out with community linkages to propose other entities/organizations within their community with whom they aim to develop strategic partnerships.
- CCI will accept applications from multiple clinic sites within the same organization. Up to three clinic sites per organization can apply. Project team members may overlap, but each site must define the team responsible for its MAT program and their site-specific goals. Each site selected will be eligible for a grant of up to $75,000.
For more information, visit CCI.
