Creating Statewide Community Partnerships: Spanning Boundaries between Public Health, Emergency Housing & Criminal Justice

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ABSTRACT Entitled “Creating Statewide Community Partnerships: Spanning Boundaries Between Public Health, Emergency Housing, and Criminal Justice,” this proposal seeks to bridge a siloed behavioral health landscape across Michigan. During the project, the team will develop, implement, and test multiple activities to bridge structural gaps and improve downstream impacts. The first is developing and implementing a statewide behavioral healthcare crises system via a virtual dual-diagnosis urgent care entity (V-DUCE) that provides on-demand, same-day access to crisis services such as recovery-oriented care, emergency housing, diversion and reentry services, and other behavioral and medical service referrals and care. The second is to collaborate with courts and jails to facilitate diversion for individuals with concurrent health needs. Third, a system will be implemented to redirect individuals experiencing behavioral health crises with unmet human service needs from hospital emergency departments to V-DUCE based culturally- responsive staff member with lived-experience as their initial point of contact. Fourth, the project will work to create a clear, immediate pathway to emergency housing for individuals seeking recovery who have additional crisis care needs. Finally, our intervention provides a systematic approach to addressing the broad public health issue of unmanaged chronic health conditions within our population of focus. An innovative approach known as boundary spanning will be used to implement these activities, which involves employing individuals with a deep knowledge of local systems to staff the V-DUCE and provide concurrent service initiation. This project advances NIH's mission by assisting individuals with multiple chronic conditions, enhancing public health and eliminating health disparities.