Behavioral Health

Capacity Building

Biomedical advances in HIV prevention and treatment have brought us a long way toward ending the HIV Epidemic, but to go the entire distance, it is essential to focus our efforts on the behavioral health barriers to care our clients face.

Columbia University Behavioral Health provides skills-based training and TA for agencies that want to learn new approaches for meeting their clients' mental health and substance use needs.

What?

The Northeast/Caribbean AETC Practice Transformation (PT) Project is a multiyear intensive capacity building, training and technical assistance project. Our model employs a comprehensive multimodal longitudinal training approach for each participating site. Given the importance of integrated care in the patient centered medical home model, our PT program also offers expertise in behavioral and oral health care. This is particularly important given the impact that behavioral health has on the Continuum and the relationship between oral and systemic health.
Who?

We identified eight clinical sites for participation, representing a diverse group of care providers from all over the region. These clinics were chosen based on the high need of the populations served and the ability of the project to impact access to high quality clinical care. Sites had to be either a Federally Qualified Health Center or a Ryan White Part A or B clinic. Five of the selected sites are in the New York State, two of the sites are in New Jersey and one is in Puerto Rico.
Where?

Most activities occur at the clinical site or online, but providers are welcome to participate in other AETC trainings and consultations off site.
How?

Coordinators from eight of our regional partner sites participated in a 13-week practice facilitation training program. The trained coaches are the primary resource for the region’s PT program. Since practice transformation is highly impacted by state, local and regional policies, the coaches’ knowledge of their communities greatly enhances their ability to facilitate practice change. Each coach has developed a longitudinal relationship with their practice transformation site that includes in-depth need assessments and meetings with interdisciplinary teams of health care providers and clinic leadership on a regular basis. The clinic leadership, with the assistance of the PT coach, identified practice transformation goals for their site. The coach is responsible for coordinating TA and training requests to meet the identified goals, maintaining ongoing communication, and facilitating data collection to evaluate outcomes along the Continuum.