Rural communities opioid response program ? Mental and behavioral health - the resilient eight rural nevada behavioral health project is a collaborative effort of six (currently funded) rural and…

Rural communities opioid response program ? Mental and behavioral health - the resilient eight rural nevada behavioral health project is a collaborative effort of six (currently funded) rural and frontier counties that builds off the success and groundwork established since receiving a planning grant and subsequent implementation grant. With strategic plans completed for each of the six counties and for the region as a whole, and action plans well under way, the purpose of this project is to utilize our successful track record as a regional consortium so as to better develop strategies and services to meet the needs of its residents, in this case those related to SUD (including OUD) and behavioral health. The resilient eight consortium will deepen collaboration to expand access to and improve the quality of essential health care services for those with SUD and BH care needs. This will be on four simultaneous fronts, all of which are natural outgrowths of the current work and have been identified as major goals by the resilient eight partners in preparation for this proposal. Goal 1 - expand the workforce capable of simultaneously addressing both SUD and BH in eight medically underserved counties of rural nevada. Objective 1. The resilient eight rural nevada counties will engage community health workers to specialize in providing needed SUD and BH supports to meet the need of underserved rural frontier nevada counties. Objective 2. The resilient eight rural nevada counties will promote the use of and increase the capacity of organizations to sustainably engage community health workers in simultaneously addressing SUD and BH. Goal 2 - increase the ability at the macro-level to support, utilize, and deploy trained BH and community health workers throughout nevada as needed. Objective 1. The resilient eight coalition support the development of a statewide database used to track all community health workers and their training who work in nevada in order to identify macro-level trends for where/how chws are deployed s tatewide and where efforts and resources may best be allocated. Objective 2. The resilient eight coalition will offer training in evidence-based modalities to licensed mental health professionals, clinical interns, and community health workers to develop the depth and breadth of the BH worker pipeline in rural nevada. Goal 3 - increase the ability of the different organizations that are part of the resilient 8 coalition to effectively collaborate. Objective 1. The resilient eight coalition will continuously assess the strength of its collaboration through the use of an evidence-based tool. We believe that these three goals relate to the three overarching program goals of rcorp-BHS. Focus areas including prevention, treatment, and/or recovery.