SSW Professors Receive Important New Grants
The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has awarded BUSSW a grant to test whether providing mobile mental health and health services will result in a reduction of HIV risky behaviors among a sample of 700 Puerto Rican injection drug users. The grant includes $500,000 for the outcome evaluation and $2,000,000 for the intervention. Professor Lena Lungren is the Principal Investigator and Professor Maryann Amodeo is the Co-Principal Investigator.
The program effort will expand services of Tapestry Health’s La Voz stationary HIV outreach program to include mobile van services for the Western Massachusetts region providing HIV outreach, education, testing, and mental health counseling services. This geographic area has one of the highest HIV incidence rates related to injection drug use (IDUs) in the nation and the Latino population is disproportionately affected by the epidemic. Currently, all HIV prevention efforts are located in one community in Springfield. Through this new effort, La Voz will acquire and adapt a van to serve as a mobile program facility. Outreach workers, trained in motivational interviewing techniques, will provide HIV risk avoidance education and supplies, as well as referrals to van medical and mental health staff and to substance abuse treatment services. A trained nurse on the van will conduct HIV testing, and STI and Hepatitis testing. A full time mental health counselor will also be on the van to provide mental health screening, counseling and referrals to psychiatric care.
The BUSSW evaluation team will conduct a process and an outcome evaluation and train La Voz mobile van workers on using evidence based-services and locating and tracking clients.
In another grant, the Boston University Schools of School Work (SSW) and Public Health (SPH) have been awarded $550,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources Service Administration (HRSA) to develop an Evaluation and Support Center to help grantees providing innovative oral health care for people living with HIV/AIDS evaluate their models locally as well as in a multi-site study. SPH Professor Carol Tobias is the Principal Investigator and SSW Professor Sara Bachman is the Co-Principal Investigator.
The grant program is designed to support novel approaches to providing oral health care to HIV-positive, underserved populations in urban and non-urban areas where oral health services are inadequate or do not exist. The grants are funded under the Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program of the Ryan White CARE Act. The CARE Act legislation was enacted in 1990 to provide health care and services to low-income, underinsured individuals affected by HIV/AIDS. HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and its HIV/AIDS Bureau administer CARE Act programs, which provide treatment and services to an estimated 531,000 individuals with HIV/AIDS and their families each year.
A key requirement of the SPNS Program is the ability to develop, evaluate and replicate innovative models of care around the country. The grantees must provide a plan for disseminating project findings to local HIV/AIDS policy bodies and nationally to wider CARE Act and other audiences working with HIV-positive individuals. Grantees are also expected to incorporate a local program evaluation plan.