Project Summary:
Advancing Behavioral Health Initiative Phase III
In phase three of the Advancing Behavioral Health initiative, the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) academic partner team will create, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive plan to disseminate key findings and educate decision-makers, collaborate with the ten funded coalitions to ensure the sustainability of successful strategies, and finalize the global evaluation of the statewide initiative, building on their proven track record of academic research in the field of dissemination of evidence-based strategies.
After working with the ten funded community coalitions through a year of planning and five years of implementation, the academic partner team is well-positioned to achieve these aims. In partnership with coalition staff, they have drafted an implementation catalog that details the vital activities necessary for successful strategies across multiple entities and sectors, including schools, health care systems, tribal communities, workplaces, and rural and farming communities. Approaches include mental health care access, community-based mental health awareness, resource navigation, evidence-based suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and workforce support and development.
The team has identified various audiences for this information, including government, healthcare, schools, and community organizations.
However, the catalog represents only one piece of a larger communications and dissemination plan. In collaboration with an outside consultant and MCW's office of communications, the academic partners will capitalize on the expertise of the community coalitions to encourage the replication and expansion of impactful strategies to improve behavioral health.
This project is part of AHW's Advancing Behavioral Health Initiative, an eight-year, $20 million initiative bringing together 10 community coalitions from across Wisconsin to address pressing mental health needs within their communities. The initiative is designed in three phases, providing a funded planning year, a five-year implementation period, and a two-year sustainable transformation phase. Learn more here.