Proyecto Juntos

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Abstract Proyecto Juntos, or "Project Together", is a health equity structural intervention to improve access to mental/behavioral health services and ultimately improve health outcomes for three NIH priority populations: ethnic minorities (i.e., Hispanic/Latinos), communities with lower socioeconomic status; and rural underserved. Proyecto Juntos will be led by The Southeast Arizona Health Education Center (SEAHEC), a rural health workforce agency, and will target a rural, four-county region in southern and eastern Arizona with limited access to mental/ behavioral health services. Through community-led assessment and analysis, the proposed project will identify and address critical structural and systemic factors shown to disproportionately burden the communities being targeted including: 1) Lack of Access to Culturally Respectful/Linguistically Appropriate Health Resources. 2) Unnavigable Health Care System/Need for Care Coordination, 3) Lack of Insurance, 4) Lack of Transportation and 5) Stigma against mental/behavioral health & health services. To address these structural barriers long-term, Proyecto Juntos will leverage long-standing partnerships with community organizations and academic institutions and build new cross-cutting, multisectoral partnerships, with state, regional, and local agencies. Proyecto Juntos will occur in three phases: 1) assessment/planning/developing intervention strategies; 2) implementation of structural interventions; and 3) evaluation, dissemination of findings and development of a sustainability plan. SEAHEC's cultivated trust in under-resourced rural and frontier communities, established multisectoral partnerships, and history working with university researchers uniquely places Proyecto Juntos to make lasting changes to healthcare with communities rarely reached by research and government efforts while applying rigorous research and evaluation methods.