Lawton community health center maternal behavioral health services - lawton community health center (lchc) proposes to implement the lawton community health center maternal behavioral health…

Lawton community health center maternal behavioral health services - lawton community health center (lchc) proposes to implement the lawton community health center maternal behavioral health services program. Lchc serves a population of 343,532 residents of 12 counties in southwest oklahoma (OK), 11 of which are entirely rural. The aim of our project is to establish a network of maternal behavioral health care for pregnant and postpartum individuals, to strengthen community referral pathways and improve maternal behavioral health outcomes and reduce mortality in the perinatal and postpartum period. Our population lives entirely within federally recognized tribal lands of the kiowa-comanche-apache-fort sill apache, cheyenne-arapaho, chickasaw, and caddo-wichita-delaware tribal statistical areas. Residents of our counties experience some of the most severe socioeconomic disparities in the US, and approximately 25.5% experience mental health and/or substance use conditions. Our program will achieve the following goals: (1) establish a behavioral health team dedicated to providing maternal mental health and substance use services. (2) establish a perinatal addiction medicine physician to provide medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder and specialized mental health and SUD services for perinatal individuals. (3) train clinic staff on stigma reduction and strategies for engaging and supporting perinatal individuals in behavioral health care. (4) offer travel vouchers and establish protocols to cover the cost of maternal behavioral health care for individuals with financial barriers to access. (5) establish a regional infrastructure and clinician training to improve mental health and substance use disorder screening, identification, assessment, referral and follow-up for perinatal and postpartum individuals. We aim to serve 150 people in year 1, 400 in year 2, 800 in year 3, 1,200 in year 4 and 2,000 individuals in year 5. Over the course of the five year project, we will serve 4,550 pregnant and postpartum individuals.